In today’s college basketball era, where rosters are constantly reshuffled like so many playing cards, coaches face a vexing decision. Do they double down on continuity, which means trying to win with younger players? Or do they use the transfer portal to get old and stay old?
Then there’s Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams, whose team got old the old-fashioned way. The Aggies’ starting lineup consists of four seniors and a junior, all but one of whom have played at least three years in the program. Of the five reserves averaging double digit minutes, four are seniors and three are juniors. Seven of Texas A&M’s top eight scorers returned from last season. To this mix, Williams added three transfers in the spring. Two are seniors, one is a junior, and all of them fit into the unique, unrelenting culture that the well-traveled Williams has been steadily building since he alighted in College Station five years ago.
Williams is a self-proclaimed numbers guy, so he is well-aware of how all of this adds up. Texas A&M currently ranks fourth in KenPom’s continuity metric, which measures the percent of returning minutes from the season before. Yet, the Aggies are also ninth in experience, making them the only team that is in the top ten in both categories. Gonzaga ranks fifth in continuity and 12th in experience, but beyond those two, just eight of the teams in the top 30 in continuity are even in the top 100 in experience. Only one (Butler) is also in the top 40.
It’s not just difficult to build a winning program this way, it’s darn near impossible. Yet, there is no denying that it’s working. The Aggies are 9-2 and riding a five-game winning streak, capped by Saturday’s win over then-No. 11 Purdue in Indianapolis. That has vaulted them to No. 12 in this week’s AP poll (and No. 10 in the Hoops HQ Top 25), which ties their highest rank under Williams. They have done so while playing one of the nation’s toughest schedules, with all but three games coming against power conference teams and only five at home. This remarkable ascent didn’t come via a sudden breakthrough so much as a steady, muddy, persistent slog. But the air smells just as fresh.
Coaches are usually cagey when asked to compare their teams with previous editions, but Williams does not hesitate to proclaim this to be his best squad yet at Texas A&M. “Oh, yessir, yessir,” he says when asked the question. “We don’t have the best players, but we have a lot of good players who through their maturity, through their character, through their experience with us, they have great belief in one another. They have great belief in how we go about things. Everybody is all in emotionally, which at a place like this is a competitive advantage.”
“We don’t have the best players, but we have a lot of good players who through their maturity, through their character, through their experience with us, they have great belief in one another.”
—Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams
That type of belief is necessary because the Aggies emphasize the parts of the game that are the least fun to play – defense and rebounding. They do not utilize any player taller than 6-foot-9, yet Texas A&M leads the nation in offensive rebound percentage (43.7 percent). The Aggies are also No. 6 in adjusted defensive efficiency and average 8.0 more free throw attempts than their opponents. (Their 17-9 scoring advantage from the stripe proved decisive against Purdue.) Texas A&M is improved at the offensive end, but it still ranks 44th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency and 265th in three-point percentage (31.0). The Aggies are not always pretty to watch, but they wear that style well. “We don’t like pretty,” senior point guard Wade Taylor IV says. “That’s why we’re on this winning streak, because we know what we’re good at. We like it when we’re grinding. We like when it’s hard. We like when we’re uncomfortable because that’s when we’re most comfortable.”
Taylor embodies what this program is about in every possible way. Though he stands just 6 feet, 186 pounds, he was named first team All-SEC as a junior and was tapped a preseason all-league selection this fall. He leads the Aggies in scoring (16.0 points per game) and assists (4.5) while also grabbing 3.5 rebounds per game. “He doesn’t look the part, but he plays the part,” Williams says.
Taylor also managed to graduate in three years and is now working on his Masters in in recreational youth development. He started the 4 Wade Taylor Foundation to empower youth programs that are focused on mental health, leadership development and financial literacy. Taylor doesn’t have an NIL agent, but on Tuesday he announced a new deal with Adidas. He might have been able to make more money if he had switched to another school, but he says he never thought about entering the portal. “When I chose this university, I knew I was going to be here until I was done with college,” he says. “This is my second home.”
There have been plenty of rough patches along the way for Taylor and his teammates. An eight-game SEC losing streak his freshman year. Losses to Murray State and Wofford the next season. When Taylor was a junior, the Aggies lost five SEC games in a row. In 2022, they made a surprise run to the SEC Tournament final, only to be one of the first teams left out on Selection Sunday. The Aggies have played in two NCAA Tournaments the last five years and won just one game, which came in the first round last season over Nebraska.
Taylor believes all those setbacks fomented a sense of purpose amongst this group, which led to the success it is now enjoying. “We have a lot of guys who have been here through all the losing streaks,” he says. “We’ve had to go through the slumps to be where we are now. That’s why this team has the highest ceiling of any team that I’ve been on. We know what it takes to win.”
Taylor may be the leading scorer, but on this team, every player is a role player. That’s especially true on the glass, where seven Aggies average 3.5 rebounds or more, led by 6-foot-7 senior Andersson Garcia’s 6.9 per game. Zhuric Phelps, the 6-foot-3 senior transfer from SMU, chips in 3.7 rebounds per game from the two-guard spot, where also ranks second in scoring (13.3) and assists (2.7). Another transfer, 6-foot-9 junior forward Pharrel Payne, had his best game of the season against Boilermakers, posting season highs in point (16) and rebounds (9) in 24 minutes off the bench.
Williams doesn’t have to bring in lots of transfers every year because he loses players at a lower rate than most every other SEC coach. “I don’t have a problem with the portal, but I don’t think if we’re going to be any good at Texas A&M that we can have ten guys that are brand new every year,” he says. When he does go portaling, Williams looks for players with multiple years of eligibility remaining. For example, the team’s starting power forward, 6-foot-8 senior Henry Coleman III, played his first season at Duke and has been at Texas A&M for the last four. (He is also an honors student who has served three years as chair of the SEC Men’s Basketball Leadership Council.) Garcia is in his third season at Texas A&M after transferring from Mississippi State as a sophomore. The continuity extends to Williams’ staff, which according to his calculations totals 106 years together at various stops. “It’s decades more than anybody in college basketball,” he says.
The cultural buy-in has to be in place at the start — before the start, even. That’s why Williams is brutally honest with recruits about what they can expect, even if it means they end up elsewhere. “I say no to way more people than I say yes to,” Williams says. “I want them to know that this is how we go at it every day. If that doesn’t fit you or your uncle or your mama or your aunt or your dad, then you don’t need to come.”
Each September, Williams takes the team on a weekend boot camp. They practice twice daily at a local high school and spend their nights at a local campground, where they eat dinner together (no cell phones allowed), play dominos and cards and then sleep in bunk beds inside the cabins. Those bonds sustain the group during the dog days of the season and lay the groundwork for direct, unflinching communication. “Our culture is built around telling the truth, whether you want to hear it or not,” Taylor says. “We like to say, if we see it, we say it. Because that’s what it takes to be successful.”
The Aggies will need all of those intangibles in the weeks ahead as they grind their way through an SEC which is shaping up to be the strongest conference in modern college basketball history. They know there will be some setbacks, perhaps another losing streak or two, but that won’t change who they are or what they’re trying to do. They have earned their wisdom the hard way and they don’t want this ride to end any sooner than it has to. “We know we can’t take anything for granted,” Taylor says. “We can’t take a practice for granted, a film session, a dinner together, a game, a plane ride, a bus ride. For a lot of us, this is our last time going through it. It’s up to us to make the most of it.”
