Maryland hired Buzz Williams to be its next men’s basketball coach, the school announced Tuesday afternoon, bringing to College Park a proven program-builder who has directed three schools to a combined 11 NCAA tournaments, including four appearances in the Sweet 16 and one trip to the Elite Eight.
The move comes roughly 48 hours after Kevin Willard departed Maryland for the coaching job at Villanova, ending a saga that commenced before the Terrapins’ NCAA tournament opener, when he delivered pointed remarks about resources allocated for men’s basketball and reports linking him to the Wildcats’ vacancy.
Williams, 52, is set to be introduced at a news conference Wednesday at Xfinity Center. He spent the previous six seasons at Texas A&M after prior coaching stints at Virginia Tech, Marquette and New Orleans.
“It is an honor and privilege to be named the head coach of the University of Maryland men’s basketball team,” Williams said in a statement. “I want to thank President [Darryll] Pines and [interim athletic director] Colleen Sorem for this opportunity to lead one of the most prestigious programs in the country. In leading this program, I promise to uphold the history of Maryland basketball and make Terp Nation proud with the men who represent this institution.”
Maryland does not have a permanent athletic director after Damon Evans left to take the same position at SMU last month. The announcement of Williams’s hiring was made by Sorem.
Williams directed Texas A&M to the past three NCAA tournaments, advancing to the second round in each of the past two appearances. This season, fourth-seeded Texas A&M defeated Yale in the first round before fading down the stretch against No. 5 Michigan, the Big Ten tournament champion, and losing by 12.
The SEC coach of the year in 2019-20 and 2022-23 becomes the second former Texas A&M coach to leave for Maryland, following Mark Turgeon in 2011.
Turgeon’s rocky tenure ended when he stepped down eight games into the 2021-22 season as calls for his dismissal from a disgruntled fan base continued to escalate. Evans hired Willard during the offseason, and when it became all but certain over the past few days that Willard would be heading to Villanova after three years with the Terps, Williams surfaced as a candidate.
Pines issued a statement posted to the school’s website Sunday indicating a national search would commence immediately, and he and Sorem took the lead.
“Finding the right person to lead Maryland Men’s Basketball was critical to the continued success of our program, both on and off the court,” Pines said in Tuesday’s statement. “With an exemplary record of competitive success and a demonstrated commitment to providing leadership and development to our student-athletes, Coach Buzz Williams is the ideal coach to lead us forward. We could not be more thrilled to welcome him to College Park.”
The immediate mandate for Williams in his first stint in the Big Ten, where Maryland finished second this season, is to retool a roster that has been stripped to its bare bones via the transfer portal and expiring eligibility, leaving the Terps probably without their entire starting lineup dubbed the “Crab Five,” which led the Terps to their first Sweet 16 appearance since 2016.
The starting backcourt of Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Rodney Rice headlined a wave of Maryland players entering the portal this week. Starting forward Julian Reese and starting wing Selton Miguel have exhausted their eligibility. Freshman phenom Derik Queen has not revealed his plans, but the 6-foot-10 center is a projected lottery pick and expected to declare for June’s NBA draft.
Top reserves DeShawn Harris-Smith and Tafara Gapare also entered the portal, and four-star high school guard Chris Jeffrey reopened his recruitment after committing to Maryland in October.
Williams is no stranger to program transformation, having turned around Virginia Tech. Upon his arrival in Blacksburg in 2014, the Hokies had reached the NCAA tournament once in the previous 18 seasons. Williams guided Virginia Tech back to the NCAA tournament in his third season, the first of three consecutive tournament appearances that culminated in a close Sweet 16 loss to No. 1 overall seed Duke in 2019.
He previously led Marquette to five NCAA tournament appearances. The highlights of that run were a trip to the region final in 2013, when the Golden Eagles shared the Big East regular season title, and a Sweet 16 appearance two years earlier. He spent six seasons as the head coach in Milwaukee before leaving for Virginia Tech, where he coached for five seasons before departing for Texas A&M.
Williams accumulated at least 100 wins in each of his previous three stops and gets a chance to become just the third coach to earn 100 victories at four programs, joining Lefty Driesell (Davidson, Maryland, James Madison, Georgia State) and Steve Alford (Iowa, New Mexico, UCLA, Nevada).
Williams has a career record of 373-228 (.621 winning percentage) at four schools. His first coaching job came in 2006-07 at New Orleans, where he spent one season.
“We are thrilled to bring a coach of the caliber of Buzz Williams to the University of Maryland,” Sorem said. “His incredible record of success at three prominent basketball programs speaks for itself, but we were equally impressed with his tireless work ethic and his dedication to building a program the right way. He embraces the high expectations here at Maryland, and we are all excited to get started on this new era in Maryland basketball.”