Last season was without argument the best season in the Buzz Williams' era.

Do we consider this season a step back, a step forward, or about the same in terms of program momentum and progress?

Last season
Overall record: 25-10
SEC record: 15-3
SEC tournament record: 2-1
NCAA record: 0-1 (Lost to #10 seed Penn State - and PSU won comfortably)

This season
Overall record: 21-15
SEC record: 9-9
SEC tournament record: 2-1
NCAA record: 1-1 (Beat #8 seed Nebraska, lost in OT to #1 seed Houston)

What are you gonna do with the answer to that question?

Buzz can get teams to play at a level that's competitive with the best teams in the country for certain stretches

The question now is can he get players that are talented enough to play that way all year? It doesn't appear so.

I think we're a couple of high caliber 3 point shooters away from something special next season. Get to recruiting!

Slight step forward.

we met expectations. Until we know the make up of the roster next year, it's hard to say what next years expectations will be

Step back as an overall season, but to what extent Marble impacted that is difficult to say.

Non Con schedule quality - huge step up. It was very "fun" to be ranked 15th and going into such an early gauntlet, big games very early. I feared we went too far the other way and over scheduled, but I believe that schedule and SOS is exactly what got us our berth and 9 seed.

Conference run - Disappointed play in conference, for the most part. Our lows were very low, the inconsistency was frustrating. The shooting was odd, it was shocking just HOW bad it was and for how LONG. You can see recently we have the capability to shoot better, but personnel, scheme, and confidence all had an impact. It was just surprising how long they shot very poorly.

If we had found our identity a bit earlier in the year we would have had a higher seeding and could have possibly made it to second weekend. The Tourney win was nice, but my goal for A&M is to qualify and once in it's basically a crapshoot as far as how far you advance (especially if not a dominant team).

Marble loss hurt the seed, Radford, Coleman, and Washington injuries through season may have impacted seed although we oddly had some of our best wins/performances when missing 1 or more.

The preseason #15 ranking definitely has an impact as far as perception of season success, but I don't feel it was just an external source telling us we should be good. We looked at the returning roster, with hope for Carter and Wallace, and had expectations as fans. Didn't quite live up to that over the course of the season, but how the team was playing in March did.

OOC scheduling is a great point to bring up as well. The committee has made it clear that performing at least average against a strong OOC schedule is worth one or two seed lines in the bracket.

Very similar seasons. Slight step back back, in terms of record, and because we dropped games we should have won. I think our seeds in each year is a pretty accurate representation how we did, especially considering that even though we may have been underseeded last year, we did lose the game, too.

It was nice to win an NCAA Tournament game this year, but to me that's just kind of ancillary to any evaluation. Maybe if we'd won last night, or especially last night and next Friday, that would swing the pendulum to this year.

Now that we have the NCAA Tournament going, and can see some of the interesting things happening...how do people evaluate say, our season compared to NC State's season? That I'm curious about, because they didnt have a regular season that would have got them in at all, which a lot of people were kind of putting in "fireable offense" category for us, but now they also won their conference and made it to the Sweet 16, so simultaneously they had "worst season ever" and also "greatest season of all time" according some of our fans.

Slightly better at end of season

Losing Marble hurt, and the new guys we brought in to replace Dex and others we lost underperformed.

We did pick up a kid from the Netherlands who occasionally could hit a couple of 3's in a row. ;-)

We don't have any really effective bigs, but that's the way Buzz's teams are - guard oriented. I doubt that will change.

The bright points were Wade, who carried the team early. Obaseki, who carried the team late. Garcia's rebounding, and Solo's improvement.

We need two more shooters, minimum. And two effective big men.

from 10 losses to 15 losses

with a nice flourish at the end

Texas A&M said:

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Regular season - a step back.
Tournament - a step forward.

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this

treading water with no obvious path (like improved talent acquisition) to the next level.

Mixed bag . As others have said we were a lot more consistent in the conference season last yr but that all kind of got forgotten with the early tourney exit to a team that was good but not great . There were a lot more challenges this yr for Buzz as the team battled thru the preseason loss of a player they were counting on plus a variety of different injury/illness situations throughout. The strong finish was a positive.

The first round NCAA victory this yr felt good, and the 2nd round OT loss to a 1 seed, while deflating because of how it went down still leaves me with a positive feel for how close the program is to being a true contender .

At the end of it I feel like next year could go very well which is about how I felt this time last year. I do think this yr would have been 4-5 wins better with Marble and maybe we are sitting in the Sweet 16 but I also know I have to get over that cuz we didn't have him… for whatever reason. Had we pulled that game out last night the overall sentiment here would be so much different on this board. I think that speaks to the volatility of the board more than anything else.

From a player development standpoint, we saw Andy, Solo, and ultimately Manny take significant steps forward imo. Jace improved as well from beginning to end of season. Overall team shooting issues … I dunno what to think about that other than we have to get better somehow.

What the committee thinks is that a nicer overall record with a weaker non conference schedule and good end of regular season metrics gets you a #7 seed

A worse record but tougher schedule with playing well down the stretch gets you a #9 seed.

What you do once seeded is up to you

I would rather have the 6-7 seed so that means not a tough non conference but no losing streak in conference

Same old way

I've read here, from many people, that what matters in college basketball is what you do in the dance. From that perspective I don't know how you don't look at this season as an improvement.

We made it back to back which starts to show consistency. Especially if you subscribe that we should of been there in the NIT year. We beat down one of the tournament "stories" aka around here as Penn State version 2, beating them at their own 3 point shooting game. Finally we took #1 to the wire in the days best game. I know providing an entertaining game for the audience is probably low on most people's I care list, but CBS/TBS was most likely happy they didn't have another dog game and that can't be bad if only from a credibility perspective.

Lot to like, lot to regret, lot to hope we improve on. IOW..sports

Overall forward.

Better non conf / SOS.
Overcame setbacks (personnel / injuries).
Worse record in conf but still in top half of conf.
Finished season strong.
Multiple (potentially returning) players developed / improved / stepped up.
Much better NCAA tournament performance / outcome / exposure / excitement.

bobinator said:

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Fair or not, any time we win a tournament game and didn't the year before it's a step forward. I'm probably the biggest regular season guy on this board but to most people this sport is still all about what you do in March so you can't ignore that. Is what it is.

There were also some individual pieces that took big steps forward. Garcia, Solo, Wade in some ways, and of course Manny, though I wish we had a better feel for why exactly Manny just seemed to flip a switch all of a sudden. Would have been nice for that to happen in December or January, but better late than never.

Overall I'd say a slight step forward, but now let's go get some more players and capitalize on it.

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That was certainly an amazing 'flip'. Manny went from an okay role-player to a first team all-SEC quality player seemingly overnight.

JJxvi said:

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I should also say that following up a good year with a good year is always a step forward for the program, IMO.

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Fantastic point. We took a step forward because we've shown some degree of consistency for the last 3 seasons. We've only been to the dance 16 times as a program, Buzz already has 12% of our invites to the dance even if the conference performance wasn't as dominant as last season.

Snag some more shooters and have a proper chance to replace Marble at Center in the portal and we could start to make this a basketball program we can depend on.

We have moved a step forward. After ending February with 5 consecutive games, we went 6-2 in March, losing only to Florida 95-90 in the SEC tournament semifinal game and to Houston 100-95 in overtime in the Round of 32.

PJYoung said:

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After being down 12 points with less than 2 minutes remaining vs. 1-seed Houston, Texas A&M showed incredible resilience to send the game to overtime.

Aggie fans have a lot to be proud of 👏 pic.twitter.com/eGR23wccTI

— ESPN (@espn) March 25, 2024

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I think we got patted on the head by our primary baron to whom we owe fealty…thank you Your Grace for allowing us to farm land you own and pay you tribute.

I think in general fans are underestimating what it meant to miss Marble for the entire season and the Coleman, Radford and Solo injuries.

Dexter was an insanely difficult player to replace and we didn't strike gold in the portal.

It will be interesting to see how Jace improves because I think his potential to help us next year is pretty high.

IF Buzz can find two highly productive players in the portal to add to the mix and we have a little luck on the injury front next season I really like our chances to be a top 5 seed. This assumes everybody who is eligible comes back.