It's going to be fascinating to watch them the next couple of years. College basketball is changing in a hurry and I can't decide if that's going to make his system better or worse

I don't know or not if there's a level of recruiting Buzz could achieve that would overcome the shortfalls in his offensive tactics . Sure he'll win a lot of games and make the tourney with great players , he did it here with a decent roster but going to the next level with iso ball and so much dribbling , can't see him ever winning titles unless and until he overhauls his offensive approach.

Here are some season to date assist to turnover ratios:

Alabama 1.692 assists per turnover
Texas A & M 1.697 assists per turnover
Maryland 0.810 assists per turnover
Texas A & M last season 0.981 assists per turnover

Pretty telling wrt Maryland I feel.

bobinator said:

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It's going to be fascinating to watch them the next couple of years. College basketball is changing in a hurry and I can't decide if that's going to make his system better or worse

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It's like playing the triple option.

Agree he'll win a lot of games . No titles is what I was suggesting- conference or national.

Maryland will be a 2nd tier Big 10 team at best in the next few years. Having to compete with Michigan, Michigan St. and Purdue every season will be a monumental task.

Consistently being a second tier Big Ten team would be a decent accomplishment. League is absolutely loaded almost every year.

I think it's a fascinating situation because Maryland didn't fire the last guy, he left them and so now they're all salty about it.

Why is State so bad?

Austin ags said:

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Maryland will be a 2nd tier Big 10 team at best in the next few years. Having to compete with Michigan, Michigan St. and Purdue every season will be a monumental task.

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Maryland has won a natty more recently than any of them.

I'm not absolutely certain this is going to be the case at Maryland but I'm definitely interested to see what happens. I think he's already seeing he can't play defense the same way. They dropped into a straight up zone for a lot of that game against Michigan which was wild to see. (They were, as you'd expect, terrible at it.)

I think his defense was a good idea for the SEC at the time he first deployed it because the league had a lot of athletic teams but not a ton of good spacing and shooting teams, but the Big Ten is the exact opposite. Michigan and Iowa both bombed that defense and they're currently #345 in 3pt defense. It felt like we left a lot of shooters open, but we were still top half in the country in 3pt% defense each of the last three seasons. (Of course, bombing threes is what Michigan and Iowa do, they're both top 50 in 3pt%, but so are a couple of other Big Ten teams and more are just outside of that)

But one thing we absolutely know for sure about Buzz is he doesn't handle anything unexpected particularly well and they've had a crazy injury situation this year that sort of clouds everything else. They've played 11 games and only have four players that have played in all of them and only a couple more that played in ten of them, and one of those is Payne who got seemingly catastrophically injured in two of the games he played in.

Vandy looking beatable tonight. Memphis press has bothered them

4/24 from deep is hard to overcome

Did I hear correctly? Vandy has a player in his 8th year of college basketball?

I know Miles is in his sixth

94chem said:

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Austin ags said:

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Maryland will be a 2nd tier Big 10 team at best in the next few years. Having to compete with Michigan, Michigan St. and Purdue every season will be a monumental task.

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Maryland has won a natty more recently than any of them.

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That's largely irrelevant.

bobinator said:

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I'm not absolutely certain this is going to be the case at Maryland but I'm definitely interested to see what happens. I think he's already seeing he can't play defense the same way. They dropped into a straight up zone for a lot of that game against Michigan which was wild to see. (They were, as you'd expect, terrible at it.)

I think his defense was a good idea for the SEC at the time he first deployed it because the league had a lot of athletic teams but not a ton of good spacing and shooting teams, but the Big Ten is the exact opposite. Michigan and Iowa both bombed that defense and they're currently #345 in 3pt defense. It felt like we left a lot of shooters open, but we were still top half in the country in 3pt% defense each of the last three seasons. (Of course, bombing threes is what Michigan and Iowa do, they're both top 50 in 3pt%, but so are a couple of other Big Ten teams and more are just outside of that)

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It will be interesting to see what comes of their season. Unlike Virginia Tech and here, I don't think Maryland fans will be as patient to see how many seasons it's going to take to field a competitive team.

Not with what they're paying for players for sure

I almost feel bad for them hiring both Turgeon and Buzz. Almost…

bobinator said:

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I'm not absolutely certain this is going to be the case at Maryland but I'm definitely interested to see what happens. I think he's already seeing he can't play defense the same way. They dropped into a straight up zone for a lot of that game against Michigan which was wild to see. (They were, as you'd expect, terrible at it.)

I think his defense was a good idea for the SEC at the time he first deployed it because the league had a lot of athletic teams but not a ton of good spacing and shooting teams, but the Big Ten is the exact opposite. Michigan and Iowa both bombed that defense and they're currently #345 in 3pt defense. It felt like we left a lot of shooters open, but we were still top half in the country in 3pt% defense each of the last three seasons. (Of course, bombing threes is what Michigan and Iowa do, they're both top 50 in 3pt%, but so are a couple of other Big Ten teams and more are just outside of that)

But one thing we absolutely know for sure about Buzz is he doesn't handle anything unexpected particularly well and they've had a crazy injury situation this year that sort of clouds everything else. They've played 11 games and only have four players that have played in all of them and only a couple more that played in ten of them, and one of those is Payne who got seemingly catastrophically injured in two of the games he played in.

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Opponent 3 point percentage is a pretty useless number by itself. It also need to be understood in the volume of shots taken, and the disposition of the rebounds on the misses.

Ranks right up there with 3rd down percentage in terms of useless numbers. Would you rather have your opponent go 1/10 or 8/20 on 3rd downs? Give me the 12 stalled possessions and the 40% conversion rate every time.

I don't think it's completely useless, but yes, every stat needs context. If your opponent is barely shooting any threes then that's different. In this case, Buzz has openly admitted that he doesn't mind his opponent shooting threes (the goal is to force uncomfortable threes that they'll shoot at a low percntage.)

As such, you can safely assume his teams are near the top in how many threes (as a percentage of their total shots) they shoot. And indeed, they are. Maryland is #288 in defensive 3pt rate, last year we were #350 and the year before that we were #351.

So letting your opponent shoot that many of their shots from three is fine if they're shooting a low percentage, or they're shooting a mediocre percentage and you're getting most the rebounds and not fouling. That WAS the case for us the last couple of years. It is extremely not the case for Maryland right now.

3rd down percentage is much more worthless as pure stat because for that number to even matter at all you definitely need to know how many possessions the other team had and what their fourth down conversion percentage was.

The guy is still a great basketball coach, but here's what we more or less know to be true:

1) He only wants guys that will 100% buy in to his system, and often times your production is less important than your mentality. Hayden Hefner got double-digit minutes for five years here.

2) He seems to want to build everything from the ground up instead of using the pieces he has in complementary fashion.

3) He's all about an "us against everyone else" bunker mentality.

4) He doesn't play well with the administration.

5) He typically doesn't plan on staying anywhere more than 5 years.


At Virginia Tech or Texas A&M where the basketball history (and interest in the sport) is rather barren, you can get away with that.

At Maryland you can get away with growing pains, but it will not take very long for the NIL spigot to be turned off if donors go and get him a 5* player that plays 4 minutes a game because he doesn't hustle enough.

Anybody else notice that Montana lost to an NAIA school last night, 82-75?

I did a double-take when I saw it, then looked up the box score and saw that they were missing starters and Money Williams left the game early.

Money's off arm probably got tired from pushing off defenders. Guy can get on a shooting roll tho… I'll give him that.

I don't disagree with any of that (except it's 6 years is I think what he's said) but what I think we don't know fur sure is how #2 is going to shake out. I'm not completely certain the path he's going to go down at Maryland is the same path he went down here as far as scheme goes.

Could be, but I'm not going to be too surprised if Maryland is playing a completely different scheme of basketball next year than we were here.

The foundational principles of the program will be the same, I'm sure, but I don't think he's completely committed to one style of basketball. At least he wasn't in the past, maybe that's changed.

I don't think he's committed to one style at all.

What I do think he's shown he's prone to do is lean completely into whatever style he does choose and in the process create a very rocky start.

Buzz is the type of guy that could inherit and elite transition basketball team and decide he wants them running a four corners offense because some random analytic that he decided to hyper-focus on says it might win him one or two more games.

During that time, two of the stud transition players will get frustrated and lose major minutes or leave, the team will absolutely look like dog crap trying to figure out the new approach, but by Year 3 they will have improved from 13 wins to 18-19 wins and definitely be tracking positively.

I don't truly believe he designs things to start bad and get better each year to make it look like he's the difference maker, but it sure looks like it sometimes.

Yeah I agree with all that. I guess what I'm saying is I think given that he's starting with a higher talent level AND already recruiting at a higher level at Maryland he might choose a style that players want to be in and like playing in a little more than he did here. Imagine being a scoring guard in the portal and that A&M Buzz staff contacting you. Hard pass.

You're also right in, even if he does, whether that overcomes everything else or not. No clue there.

And you and everyone is definitely right that if it starts to really go sideways at Maryland they'll burn the whole thing all the way down, unlike here where when we suck people don't really get mad, they just stop paying attention.

Right now it really feels like a Buzz cycle speed run for Maryland though. Forget six years, they're either going to be pretty good and on the right track by the end of next season or the Buzz era is probably never getting off the ground there.

Sorta feels like BCG/Kentucky compatibility, but for different reasons.

Everything about Buzz last decade+ would tell me he is not the coach I want handling highly rated recruiting classes funded by donor NIL at a school with high expectations. Each of those things seemingly conflicts with the attributes he's shown.

We're going to get you highly rated recruits.... well, I'm a coach who likes only my kind of player.

We're going to really get our donors opening their pockets for NIL... well, I'm a coach who routinely creates a "us vs the world".

Good luck.

I do think he caught a break in how the last coach left. He's entering with a much higher baseline NIL level than he was going to have here or really anywhere else where he'd be a candidate. Nothing gets people in their pockets more than wanting to show the last guy.

It's why I'm not surprised he's recruiting the way he is right now. He might have the money to find "his guys" that are actually also really good players.

But yeah, he's going to need to turn that into a decent product pretty quick or the tap will shut off and then the spiral will start.

Was watching this when it happened and just about fell off the couch. Poor Ed Cooley.

Come for The Worst Missed Free Throw Attempt in History

Stay for Ed Cooley Having a Conniption. pic.twitter.com/ws4q2xxm9W

— Jake Fenner (@jakefenner_) December 21, 2025

But then when the game was over he hit a kid with a water bottle. So maybe not poor Ed Cooley after all.

Georgetown coach Ed Cooley threw a water bottle in a rage - which appeared to hit a child behind the bench pic.twitter.com/lMLnjdBY7q

— Jake Fenner (@jakefenner_) December 21, 2025

Keep an eye on LSU v Prairie View, currently a 2 point game!

Our defense can be shaky but giving up a 50 spot to PV in a half is really something

With the sparse crowd it looks like it would have been more fun if they were playing at PV.

63-53 Panthers at 17:04 in the second.

PV maybe about to get screwed on an acting job by LSU