College basketball’s most restless soul has found his next home

Buzz Williams is on the move once again, this time to Maryland. Why does he never seem to stay anywhere longer than five or six years? It's complicated

Barring a stunning, late-breaking development – and lord knows, that’s capable of happening – the 2025 men’s college basketball coaching carousel has come screeching to a halt, ending weeks of intrigue and speculation.

Darian DeVries is the latest man tasked with trying to resuscitate Indiana. Will Wade’s back at the power-conference level, where he’ll undoubtedly be making some strong-ass offers at NC State. For the second time in the past 16 years, Sean Miller has ditched Xavier for a school in the southwest. Kevin Willard did a disastrously effective job in making sure an entire state will hate him for eternity.

Of all those moves, though, one in particular caught my eye.

Following Willard’s clumsy exit to Villanova, a scorned Maryland program turned its eyes to Buzz Williams and managed to pry him away from Texas A&M, where he oversaw a team that spent the entirety of the 2024-25 season ranked in the top 25 nationally.

Williams had been with the Aggies for six seasons, the last three of which ended in NCAA Tournament appearances. Prior to that, he was at Virginia Tech for five seasons and Marquette for six.

If you think you’re noticing a pattern, you’re correct.

Williams is the most fidgety figure in major college basketball, someone whose coaching tenures have become so predictable that they may as well come with a sell-by date. He’ll go to a school, rack up 20-win seasons and NCAA Tournament appearances and by the end of his fifth or sixth year, he’ll bolt for another job, even if it’s not obviously better than the one he’s leaving behind.

What’s seemingly inexplicable becomes slightly less baffling the more one understands about Williams, one of the quirkier personalities in a profession that’s not exactly built for the straight-laced and conventional.

While a junior in college working for the student newspaper, I wrote a feature on my school’s starting center, a Tom Crean recruit who transferred to Boston University from Marquette after Williams’ first season. When I asked him about his former coach back in Milwaukee, he didn’t express bitterness or anger. Instead, he just let out a chuckle.

“Buzz is…interesting,” he said.

As Williams’ career has progressed, it’s a reputation that has only been burnished.