What's the Buzz?
In his element on the main court of the Al McGuire Center, with the first session of his summer camp winding down, MU coach Buzz Williams took some time to catch up with the local media on Friday afternoon.
The hot topic, of course, was Lazar Hayward's selection to USA Basketball's World University Games team. Williams touched on a number of other topics too, in advance of the arrival of his seven-man recruiting class to campus next Friday.
Here is what Williams had to say:
What are your thoughts on Lazar making the University Games team? I’m so excited for him and his family. I can’t think of a better kid to represent our country in that setting. I went out there on Tuesday, saw the first practice, then I stayed and watched the first practice Wednesday morning. He was really bad Tuesday night – not very comfortable in the setting, and that’s how he is. He’s a feel-type guy. He’s got to have a feel for who he’s playing with, the setting he’s playing in, the coaches he’s playing for. Wednesday morning I thought he was arguably one of the best players on their team in regards to some of the things they were doing. So his comfort level grew dramatically. He said that he was really good Wednesday night. So we’re really excited for him.
How will the experience help him once he returns to campus? I think from a leadership perspective it helps him greatly, because he’s in a different arena than he’s ever been in, in a lot of different ways, being coached things that he’s maybe not ever been coached, and playing with guys he’s never played with and trying to figure out how to be a team in a short amount of time. To compete on that stage and at that level, I think that grows you as a person, and I think that’ll help him greatly as a leader.
Can you put a value on how much that experience will help Lazar’s game? I don’t know if you can put a value to it. I think it’s almost priceless; not to be MasterCard. But I just think that him being around that level of player and competing with those people every single day, you can’t pay to do that. He’ll be home from Serbia on July 13, he’s going to go back to Buffalo for 3-4 days, and then he’ll come back here. He’s not going to be able to be in summer session 2, because of the timing of the trip, but I wanted him to be back, be around our guys, lift weights. He’ll have to pay to stay in the dorm each night because he’s not technically enrolled at that time, but I couldn’t think of a better summer for a better kid to have going into his senior year.
How important are your summer camps to you? I probably make them more important than they should be. It’s vitally important to me. I’m here from start to finish every single day. I missed when I went to Lazar’s deal, but our players supercede the importance of camp. But it’s really important to me. I know that parents work very hard, and it’s very important to them that when they send their children to a camp they want them to be taught something worthy of being taught. They want them to be treated the way they would be treated at home. We over-staff it – we have the largest camp staff ever in the history of college basketball. We make absolutely no money, but I’m not doing it for the money. I’m doing it for the kids. Some of those guys are going to grow up and play for Marquette someday, and they’ll remember their years of coming to our camps, and that’s important to me.
Do you have any word on how Jerel, Wesley and Dominic are faring as far as the upcoming NBA draft? Yeah, I talk to those guys nearly every day. Jerel was in Toronto on Tuesday and he hasn’t had a workout since then. He was really good – it may have been his best workout thus far. Wes hasn’t had a workout since the previous week. He hasn’t had as many as Jerel has had, but he’s done well in the ones he has had. Nic is in Indianapolis. He’s doing good, training down there. I think he’ll probably be in Chicago in the next couple of weeks, and I think he’s probably mentally and physically getting back to 100 percent. So I think all three of them are trending in the right direction. Where that necessarily means they’ll be a month from now, I think there’s too much variance in all of that to necessarily project.
What will draft night be like for you next Thursday? I love those guys whether they play another game for any team or not. My relationship with them will never play, regardless of whether they’re a pro or a European pro, or they can come back here and be a graduate assistant if they want. I love those kids. It’s been interesting to me to see how it’s almost recruiting in regards to how, from a personnel perspective, teams are trying to put together their teams – which is a lot of what we do. They don’t like little guards; they like big guards. They don’t like post players; they like 6-9 runner-jumpers. When you talk to all of the personnel guys within the league, it’s interesting to hear their philosophy. So from that perspective, it’s been really good for me. It’s been beneficial for me to hear what they have to say. But I hope all three get drafted, and I hope that the order is 1-2-3 in the first round.
When do the new players arrive, and can you talk about their development? They’ll be here for 40 days – a week from today – and those 40 days that they’re here, it’ll kind of be like Moses. It’s important that they’re in the wilderness with Todd Smith, and that they grow as a team and strength-wise as much as possible during those 40 days. I think if there was any way for high-school kids to graduate a week earlier, and for Marquette to start summer school a week later, we would have had them here the entire summer. But itinerary-wise, it couldn’t work out. But those 40 days that they’re here are really, really important, and that’s why I want Lazar to come back here – because I want Lazar to be around those guys. And I want all of our guys to be together for the first time ever, and those 40 days are really important.
How is this summer different for you compared to last summer? I weigh 14 more pounds. A little older. I’ve gotten whipped 10 times. I have a one-month and one-day old baby. Probably a little bit more confident in regards to knowing the lay of the land and the landscape. Excited about the newness of our team, knowing that we lost some really good players. But I knew that when I was hired. But really excited about where we’re heading. I don’t think you can be an elite-level team with one recruiting class; I think you’ve got to do it back to back to back. And I think that if your culture is such that you’re doing the right things every single day – not just recruiting, but doing camps the right way, and pouring your heart and soul and passion into what you’re doing every day. I think when you start adding them up over the course of a year and three years and six years, it ends up being a pretty special deal.
What did you think about the NCAA rule change regarding coaches replacing injured free-throw shooters? It’s good. It was enacted 62 days later than it should have been.
Were you influential in lobbying for it? You know me well enough to know I do not lobby at all, in any sort of way. I don’t. I was asked the same question yesterday, about my thoughts on the officiating during that game, and my reply was the same as it is to you. I care about those 13 guys and all of the coaches and their families on our staff, and I don’t try to do somebody else’s job.
How is Joe recovering from his knee surgery? You know what? He’s done it so many times, he kind of knows what rehab does. He’s been great, he’s working out every day with Ernest in regards to rehab. He’s going in the right direction. I’d say it’s a nine-week deal, and he will be here eight of those weeks. So that ninth week is the first week of the 10 days they’ll be able to be home from the end of summer session to the fall semester. But the first eight weeks with Ernest, he’ll get him going in the right direction.
Do you feel pretty encouraged that he’ll be close to recovered enough by the time practice begins in mid-October? Yeah, I think if he’s going to fully recover, we’ll know before the start of practice. If he’s not going to fully recover, I think his knee’s shot, and he’ll never recover. That’s the truth.
What are the advantages of Lazar being with USA Basketball as opposed to him being on campus at MU? Well, he’s being coached every day. He’s being coached something new every day. He’s playing with 12 other elite-level players – nothing against the other 12 players on our team that he’d be playing against, but they’re not all elite-level guys. Those guys are all juniors- and seniors-to-be, a lot of them are going to be pros, and for him to be able to play against those guys every day, and then to be able to play in competition against the teams that he’s going to play, I think it propels his career personally, and I think that it will also help our players because of the experience that he has, and how our players have a relationship with him and the leader that they view him as.
Will Bo Ryan be instituting his swing offense for the University Games? No. I had lunch with Coach Ryan on Wednesday morning. He’s doing some really good stuff with them. The World University Games team and the U-19 team were all in the same gym, and so it’s kind of 20 minutes on, 20 minutes off in regards to what they’re doing. There’s 20 minutes of work, and then they basically talk about what they’re going to do in the next 20 minutes. He’s doing some really good stuff. A lot of the guys on the team are 6-5 to 6-7 pass-dribble-shoot guys. They’ve got 1-2 real 5 men, and you could argue that they don’t even have a point guard. But I think that they can all do a lot of different things, and some of the things that he’s doing with them offensively best utilizes that skill set.
Have you heard anything regarding where Jerel, Wesley or Dominic might be drafted? No. Nobody has. It’s a long time until next Thursday, when the draft is, in regards to the decisions that are going to be made. I think in recruiting, when you commit, that’s kind of the deal. You commit to us, you’re coming to play for us, then we just kind of start adding around that. In (the teams’) situation, they’re only getting one or two (picks), who are they trying to sign in free agency, what are the agents of those free agents saying? So all those things are in a state of flux. I think a lot of things change between now and then. I could be wrong, but I’ve never drawn an NBA check. That’s what I think.
How beneficial will the extra month or so of off-season workouts on campus benefit Dwight Buycks? He already has a feel for our culture because he’s been here. He graduated Indian Hills on a Friday and he started school here on a Monday. He’s been here I think 28 days now, and all of a sudden he knows the deal. He’s been going to class every day, he’s taking hours toward his degree, he’s lifting four days a week, he’s playing four days a week, he’s been around our guys. And the time he’s been around our returning guys, now when our newcomers come, it’s almost like Dwight’s a returner. And that helps when you have a class with seven guys. Now Dwight’s an old head by the time next week comes. He’s been really good. He’s an unbelievable kid. An unbelievable kid that – I don’t want to share too much of his story – that has overcome way more than anybody would ever know. And for him to be standing in this position says a lot about his character. But he is very hungry to do the right thing, and that’s not just as a player, it’s as a person and as a student. I respect that greatly.
As you head into the start of practice in the fall, you probably know Lazar is going to start. But other than that, is it a totally clean slate? I would say that’s correct. I don’t know if Lazar will start; we may bring him off the bench. (laughs) I think Lazar’s a definite starter, but he’s got to earn it just like everybody else. You know I think? I think all of those guys – Cooby, Jimmy Butler – are working. Chris Otule is light years ahead of where he was last year at this time. Does that mean he’s going to be a guy that can get four rebounds and six points in a Big East game in 17 minutes? He’s going to go from nothing to that? That’s hard to do. But today they’ve been accountable for that, and let’s do it again tomorrow. And not to sound trite, but it’s a long time until we have our first game, but I do think there’s an air of excitement. Everybody knew Jerel, Wes and Nic were going to start. Everybody knew Lazar was going to start. So the opinion was, which 5 man are you going to play? Which guy are you going to call a 5 man that’s going to play? And now it’s like, ‘Well, that kid’s pretty good. He’s pretty good. He’s never played.’ Well, none of them have played, and so there’s kind of a, ‘Well, I guess I’ve got to earn it.’ As much as I root for the underdog, I also root for, ‘You’ve got to earn it.’I think we’re on a narrow path within what we do and the culture that we function under, and if you do it every day long enough, I think it’ll probably add up the way it’s supposed to.
So do you like the great unknown at this point? Is it exciting in a sense? I like the of excitement that nobody knows, we’ll be picked 11th or 12th. Everybody will talk about, ‘Well, it’s a great recruiting class.’ But of the 16 teams in the Big East, we return 64 minutes out of 200. That’s dead-last. Distinctly dead-last. In points per game returning – I know you’ll have a guess on this – we’re dead-last. We’ve lost 72% of our scoring. And rebounding, I don’t want to surprise you, we’re dead-last. We return eight rebounds per game. We’ve lost 52% of our rebounding. We’ll be picked 12th. We should be picked 16th. That’s the truth. If you just statistically look at the data, we lost everything. Teams are always picked in accordance to their returning players. That’s why Marquette was picked so high last year – they had the best returning players relative to the other teams. So none of us have done anything. ‘Buzz has coached the guys that were here when he took the job. Now he’s got his guys in here; let’s see if he can coach.’ I like that. That’s the truth.
With the added depth you’re expected to have this year, will you be able to be a little bit more aggressive defensively? I hope so. I hope you’re right. I think as we add length and as we add depth, I think we can cover more of the floor more often in the game. And I don’t think we were ever in that position last year. I was going to play four guys 40 minutes unless they needed a drink real bad or they were in foul trouble. I don’t think that’s the healthiest way to win, but for our team last year I felt like that was true. But I think as we begin to add depth to our roster, we want those long, lean guys that can pass, dribble and shoot, and I think when you have enough of them you can extend the floor, and you can extend the time that you spend lengthening the court. I like that. Can you win like that in late March, after spring break? I don’t know. But I think you can win some games to get to spring break and still be playing. So I don’t know that I can answer that completely, because none of those guys have put on a uniform. But in theory, yes, that’s the direction we’re heading.
One more thing...Jeronne Maymon will be playing his final game as a prepster at 9 a.m. Saturday in the WBCA Division 1 All-Star game at the UW Fieldhouse.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/sports/48635352.html
