While the future of what role the NCAA will play as a disciplinarian is murky, in the present, they still will be handing out punishments for various violations. On Friday, they did just that, as the Division I Committee on Infractions announced that the Texas A&M men’s basketball program has broken multiple NCAA rules.
The releases discloses an unnamed assistant coach and the head coach of the team, Buzz Williams, violated multiple NCAA recruiting, COVID-19 and general rules. During an unofficial visit for a prospect the school was recruiting, the unnamed assisted watched him play during an open gym-type setting and also held “two 45-minute tryouts with that prospect, during which he provided coaching instruction.”
The assistant was also pegged for hosting 24 off-campus workouts with a prospect and members of their team, which were prohibited due to the ongoing pandemic. All these gatherings were supervised, whether by this assistant or noncoaching staff members, which violates the “permissible limits for countable coaches.”
Buzz Williams was hit with allowing three additional noncoaching staff members to help out on-court during practices and skill instructions, which is not allowed. The rules allows for three total to engage on-court; Williams had six noncoaching staff members during these instances. The release states that Coach Williams did not promote an atmosphere of compliance around the program due to his involvement level and lack of monitoring his staff’s involvement.
As a result, the Texas A&M men’s basketball team was hit with a plethora of Level-II penalties. These include two years of probation, a $5,000 fine, five less official visits for men’s basketball recruits during the upcoming season, suspending unofficial visits for the first three conference games, reducing recruiting days by 5% for the upcoming season, a two-game suspension for head coach Buzz Williams, and an already served penalty in which the university self-imposed the assistant to be suspended from June 2020 until the end of the 2020-21 season, during which they operated with one less assistant.
This is not William’s first run-in with the Committee on Infractions. Prior to his fifth season as the Marquette head coach, one of his assistants was fired in Aug. 2012 due to recruiting violations while under his watch. Williams was suspended for the Big East conference opener, in which his team won 82-76 in overtime against Connecticut.
Texas A&M had a rollercoaster season by all accounts, playing only 18 games throughout the season, going 8-10 overall and 2-8 in SEC play. The Aggies had countless COVID-19 problems throughout the team, getting so bad that they did not play a single game during the month of February. Coach Williams will serve his suspension during the team’s opening two games at the Maui Invitational, with games scheduled on Nov. 22 against Wisconsin and on Nov. 23 against Butler or Houston, depending on the result of their first game. A&M is currently ranked 108 in Bartorvik’s 2022 T-Rank Projections.
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