Buzz Williams had the best team of his Texas A&M tenure this season.

College basketball, meanwhile, has four of the best men’s teams of its entire modern era this season.

And yet the Aggies and the sport’s superpowers looked almost nothing alike — sparking some concern among beleaguered Terps fans about whether Williams’ style will propel Maryland to the level they want to reach.

As Maryland looks to reassert itself as a national power after a week of upheaval and over two decades of disappointment, Williams’ arrival in College Park could ultimately do more to lift the program’s floor than its ceiling.

His teams are generally good. Over his six years in College Station, Texas A&M made the NCAA tournament each of the past three seasons, the program’s first such streak since the late 2000s, and finished in the top 35 nationally of analytics website KenPom’s rankings each of the past four years, a level of consistency not even former Aggies-turned-Terps coach Mark Turgeon could reach.

In announcing his hire Tuesday, Maryland interim athletic director Colleen Sorem said that Williams, 52, “embraces the high expectations here at Maryland.” But there are limitations to “Buzz Ball.” They are some of the same limitations that have doomed his Xfinity Center predecessors.

At Texas A&M, as Southeastern Conference rivals built Final Four teams powered by pace-and-space, 3-point-heavy offenses, Williams preferred to grind it out. The 2024-2025 Aggies, one of the country’s most experienced teams, did not take care of the ball especially well. They did not shoot from deep especially well, nor did they shoot from deep especially often. They just got a lot of rebounds (four in a row at one point in a season-opening loss to Central Florida) and shot a lot of free throws.

Williams’ approach was brutally effective at times, but almost never hyper-efficient. Texas A&M finished this season with the nation’s No. 40 offense, according to KenPom, after ranking Nos. 26 and 34 over the previous two years. The Aggies seemed willing to turn every possession into a rock fight. Duke, Houston, Florida and Auburn, which will meet Saturday in the Final Four after prolific offensive seasons, were more than happy to hunt for 3s and layups.

The Aggies were stronger this season on defense, ranking No. 9 on KenPom, but even there, they were unique. Nearly 44% of opponents’ field goal attempts came from behind the 3-point line, one of the nation’s highest rates, according to analytics website Bart Torvik. The year before, nearly 45% of the shots Texas A&M gave up were 3-pointers. In 2022-2023, nearly 46% were.

In an era where coaches ask their centers to shoot 3s and ask their guards not to shoot mid-range jumpers, Williams’ approach seems almost anachronistic. Only one of the sport’s past 10 national champions had a defense that gave up long-range shots over 40% of the time: 2018-2019 Virginia (42.5%). Seven of the past 10 champions finished the season having allowed 3-pointers at a rate of less than 36%.

Even this year, Williams’ pack-the-paint strategy worked until, late in the season, it became a liability. Tennessee hit 13 3-pointers (48.1% accuracy) in a late-February win. Six days later, Vanderbilt hit 10 (41.7%) in an upset victory. Three days after that, the Gators hit 14 (42.4%) in an early-March blowout. In mid-March, Texas hit nine (40.9%) in another upset, this time in the SEC tournament.

“What I have learned is, the skill set that was required to be a good coach 10 years ago, very little of that applies anymore,” Williams told reporters ahead of Texas A&M’s NCAA tournament opener against Yale last month. “The skill set of being a head coach is completely different than it was even when I was hired at Texas A&M.”

The hope in College Park is that Williams can fuse the best iterations of his coaching career like a late-career Frankenstein. At Marquette, where he made three straight Sweet 16s (2011-2013), Williams’ best teams were elite at protecting the ball and taking it away. At Virginia Tech, where he made the last Sweet 16 of his career (2019), his best teams were elite at outside shooting and keeping opponents off the foul line.

At Maryland, coming off its first Sweet 16 appearance in nearly a decade, Williams has a low bar to clear. Former coach Kevin Willard was a defensive stalwart over his three years, but his best Terps offense was this season’s, which finished 24th on KenPom — and was built around likely NBA lottery pick Derik Queen, a unique talent. Turgeon, in his 10-plus seasons at the reins, had just one team finish a season ranked in the top 20 in overall efficiency. Even Hall of Fame coach Gary Williams, before stepping down in 2011, had just two of his final eight teams ranked among the top 20.

Buzz Williams’ takeover leaves him with a blank slate of sorts. The Terps’ “Crab Five” starting lineup, which could be entirely picked apart this offseason by the transfer portal and graduation, accounted for 93.4% of the team’s scoring and 73.8% of its rebounding this season. A handful of other contributors have entered the portal. Willard’s only incoming recruit, meanwhile, has been released from his letter of intent.

Williams, a late arrival on the coaching carousel, will have to play catch-up. First he’ll need to figure out which players he wants to retain and target in the portal. Then he’ll need to figure out which players he can afford to retain and target in the portal. Oh, and he’ll have to do it quickly. Roster overhauls in 2025 are commonplace across the sport, but that doesn’t mean Williams’ will be easy. Even with Maryland’s bolstered war chest for transfer acquisition and player retention, an ironic legacy of Willard’s sour public appraisal of the program, Williams’ inaugural Terps team will be a product of informed guesswork.

His activity this offseason should at least shed light on how he wants that team to play. Will Williams’ staff prioritize skill or athleticism? Scorers or stoppers? Upperclassmen or underclassmen? Even if Maryland is a long way from playing in the Final Four, Williams can show just how committed his program is to looking, finally, like a Final Four team.