Tech Talk Live notes for March 9, 2015

Buzz Williams

Williams never got to watch the ACC Tournament growing up. He grew up in a small town in Texas without cable. He never got cable until he got his first coaching job. However, the allure and the tradition of the ACC Tournament are obvious. It’s a lot of fun.

Everybody is 0-0 again. When you’ve lost as much as Tech has, that’s an added pressure that gets taken away. However, if they lose they are done, and hopefully that puts an extra bounce in their step.

The team is still working very hard in practice. If you watched them practice, you’d have no idea what their record is.

Williams asked the team to do the scouting report for the Wake Forest game, and he asked them to gather all the information and break it down as they coaches typically present it to the players. They were in the office Sunday morning at nine. Buzz told them he would buy them a sausage biscuit, but he wouldn’t allow a coach to be there to help them. He split the team into two teams. He assigned a player per team as an offensive coordinator, a player as a defensive coordinator, a player as the director of player personnel, a player in charge of offensive efficiency and a player in charge of defensive efficiency. The sixth player per team was in charge of ball screen coverage. Every player had a responsibility within their own staff. They had a staff meeting later on Sunday, meaning a meeting between Buzz and the players. He demanded every single Wake Forest play, how many times they ran each play, their success rate of each play, what they did good and bad, etc. Based on the scouting report, the players had to draw up the practice itinerary and go over the game plan with Buzz.

It makes Williams emotional to go through what they’ve been through this year. The team has worked very hard, and they really care. It’s tough to watch them endure some of the things they’ve endured.

The last two first halves of basketball have been really tough to watch. That’s why Buzz did what he did with the team and the scouting report. Obviously the staff has already done the report, but he’s trying to do all he can to get the players to understand the value of a possession, even if he has to make them pretend to be coaches.

On Sunday, they also broke down a lot of the thing that caused them issues in the first half of the last two games. When you are forced to write down every single thing that goes on in a possession, you quickly realize that it’s a lot of stuff, and that you have to focus on the small details. Buzz doesn’t know if this kind of focus will change anything with regards to how the team performs, but he sure hopes that it does.

Buzz has known Wake Forest coach Danny Manning for a long time. Wake Forest has a very good point guard (Codi Miller-McIntyre) and center (Devin Thomas). When you have a good point and a good center, it immediately causes the opponent stress, and that’s before they even think about the other three positions. Tech has to be a lot better against those two guys than they were in the first meeting.

 

 

9 Responses You are logged in as Test

  1. Hill played a lot more today and noticed Smith did not.was wondering why the change.

  2. I’m proud of our team today. They showed a lot of character, we needed this. Its been a long season, on to tomorrow, Go Hokies, Beat the canes.

  3. This game prep should also help them study tape in the future. Good idea and great time to do it.

  4. Well, if they are working very hard in practice what is happening in some of these games?

      1. They flicked the switch on today. Great game. Even if tomorrow doesn’t work out at least they got a W under their belt before the season ended.

  5. Taking a very positive comment from that as well. He wants his guys to think like coaches, and is showing them some of what goes into coaching….in case any of them want to go in that direction?

  6. Cool stuff here. What a great idea to get the players involved like that in the Wake Forest gameplan.

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