Article on Buzz

[Sir Lawrence]

I like Buzz, and I understand that coaches put in long hours, but he seems really wound up.  Just hope he doesn't crash:

Coach's Corner: Marquette's Buzz Williams
Rebuilding year still an opportunity for Golden Eagles
By Brian Price / SNY.tv

Buzz Williams once spent 20 hours waiting in a coach's driveway in an attempt to get a job. It worked. (AP)

Buzz Williams started his career "looking for an opportunity." He's found it as Marquette's head coach where the Golden Eagles are 15-8 and looking to secure a tournament berth come March. Williams, however, focuses on the present and making the most of out today. Humble beginnings for Williams have dictated his love for the game of basketball and appreciation for every chance he's be given.

SNY.tv: You're playing now without the talented trio of Dominic James, Wesley Matthews, Jerel McNeal. What kind of legacy did they leave behind that your current players are trying to live up to?

BW: That's a good question. I was really fortunate to have an opportunity to be here when those guys were here. I don't know that you could ever be at one place for an extended period of time and recruit and sign, in one class, three four-year seniors that would all finish in the [school's] top-10 all-time in scoring. That's a credit to coach Tom Crean. But it was great to be around those guys, not just as players, but as people.

I speak with all of them pretty much everyday since they've been gone. It's harder with Jerel and Dominic because they're playing overseas. Wes is in Utah so I definitely talk to him every day. I think that their example for the players we have now was as good as I've ever seen. The problem is we didn't have a lot of guys returning.

Maurice Acker had never really played until Dominic broke his foot, and David Cubillian who played spot minutes throughout his career and then Lazar Hayward, who was arguably the fourth spoke in the wheel. Those three guys were able to see those three seniors everyday over a long period of time.

Jimmy Butler is the only other player who was on our team last year that had a significant role that's back this year in addition to Maurice, David and Lazar.

The standard that Dwyane Wade, Travis Diener, Steve Novak and Robert Jackson set for Jerel, Wes and Dominic is the same that they set for the current players -- achieving excellence on the court while conducting yourself in an excellent manner off of it.

SNY.tv: What are your goals for finishing out the regular season?

BW: That's the one thing I'm not good at. I've taken some continuing education classes on fortune-telling and I just can't ever finish the class [laughs]. I'm so consumed with what we've got to do today and I tell our guys all the time: "WDYL?" Older people want to live in the past and think about their glory years and young people want to live in the future and talk about what they're going to do and how they're going to make it. But I think wise people live in the present and that's the one thing I've stressed to our guys all year long: "Where do you live? Where do you live? Where do you live?" The best organizations, in any profession, are the ones that live for today. I don't know if we're going to win every game we have left or lose all of them but I know we've got to have a really good practice today and it's important that we continue to grow.

SNY.tv: How did you get your foot in the door as a young coach?

BW: I realized pretty early in my high school career that I wasn't a very good player but I knew that I really cared about the game.

Every coach that I met when I was a college student, no matter their classification and no matter their title or level, I would ask them for a business card. This was before the Internet, so from that point forward I would send any coach I met a handwritten note every week for the rest of my college career. I would write it on a sheet of notebook paper or even paper I would just find lying around the athletic office. When I did graduate from [Oklahoma City University] I had 425 college coaches that I was writing every week.

Right before I graduated I took out an emergency student loan at the financial aid office for $1,100. That was in February of my senior year. I bought a suit, a tie, a shirt, some socks and a belt and I bought a roundtrip ticket to Charlotte, North Carolina. All that stuff cost $1,100.

The next thing I did was stand in the lobby of the Adam's Mark Hotel in Charlotte for 72 consecutive hours and passed out my resume. The resume basically said that I really knew how to sweep floors and wash practice gear and hang up uniforms.

I also passed out a business card that I had created and it pretty much said: Buzz Williams. And then additionally, where a title would go below the name, mine said: "Looking for an opportunity."

I was very fortunate and blessed because on my last night in Charlotte, I got to interview for a restricted earnings position at UT Arlington. It was a very high paying entry-level job that offered $400 a month and I would also get to live in half of a dorm room.

I flew from Charlotte back to Oklahoma City and got in my thousand-dollar car that I had had since freshman year. I drove down to Arlington and looked up Coach McCarter in the phone book and, with the help of three different gas-station attendants, tracked down where he lived. I had been sitting in his driveway for about 20 hours when he finally drove up. He pulled in, got out of his car, looked at me and said: "What the hell are you doing here?" [laughs] I just said: "Hey, Coach McCarter, I just wanted to tell you one more time how much I really want the job." He told me he'd never seen anything like this but he invited me in his house and we talked some more.

At that time I was 21 years old so I didn't really have much to say. I'd been a manager at a junior college and a high school but I ended up getting the job. That's how my career started.

SNY.tv: Was that first job heaven?

BW: I thought I was coaching at Duke. [laughs]

For the first few months at Arlington I kept an inflatable mattress under my desk because I never wanted to leave the office. I was so excited to be there. And when I couldn't hold my eyes open I'd blow it up and go to sleep. The first sound of each morning [was my alarm]. I'd wake up, deflate, take a shower and go right back to work. It was heaven on earth, and I've felt that way every day of my career since.

I actually slept in my office the night before we left for Providence [this season]. I've felt very fortunate every day, no matter where I've been employed or what my title was, because coaching is all I've ever wanted to do.

SNY.tv: Tell me about your family and budgeting your time.

BW: I have four children that are all 7 years old and younger and I've been married almost 10 years. My wife was player of the year in the state of Texas and played for four years in college. That definitely helps because she understands how time intensive everything is that we [as a team] do between the traveling and the recruiting. But I've also got a job as a husband and a father. There's always something that you have to be accountable for and you have to be efficient in what you're doing. My days are really structured and it's not just my daylight hours but my night hours as well.

SNY.tv: How do you organize yourself and your team?

BW: I'm definitely type-A to an extreme. I would say that my wife and my assistant here at the office have to deal with it more than anyone else. Everything has got to be in the right place and folded and stapled correctly. There can't be any creases or dust. I don't know if there's necessarily a method to my madness. I have a diary that I made when I got here that has four pages for every day of the year. Today is Day 671 of my tenure and there's a page for today's practice preparation, the second page is an actual itinerary, the third is for my notes and thoughts after practice, and the final page is for things we have to accomplish tomorrow. I want to be efficient in what I do. I just got through running and I try to run every day for an hour. I told Scott [our SID] at 1:19 I'll be through running at 2:29 and to have Brian call me at 2:30 and that we'd talk until 2:45. I try to plan everything out very effectively.

It's now 2:47.

SNY.tv: Lastly, favorite New York restaurant?

BW: I'll be honest I'm not sure what that would be. I know, as a team, we like to eat at the ESPN Zone because it's near the hotel but that's probably not the answer you were looking for. [laughs]

SNY.tv: We're working on a SNY.tv Zone.

BW: If it's ready for the Big East tournament than that's where I'll go.

link:  http://web.sny.tv/news/article.jsp?ymd=20100212&content_id=8067614&oid=2&vkey=21

[wojosdojo]

I hate when buzz changes the question and doesn't even give you the answer!

[MU B2002]

I hate when buzz changes the question and doesn't even give you the answer!

?

[NickelDimer]

SNY.tv: Was that first job heaven?

BW: I thought I was coaching at Duke.

Classic