Buzz Williams: Former Ole Miss basketball coach Kermit Davis was SEC's best in-game coach
OXFORD — Fielding a question about the profile of the Ole Miss basketball coaching job after his Texas A&M team dealt the Rebels a 69-61 defeat Tuesday night, Buzz Williams veered ever so slightly off-topic.
He had an opinion about departed Ole Miss coach Kermit Davis to share.
"I think on both sides of the ball, Kermit Davis was the best coach in this league," Williams said. "Inside the lines, the best coach. He's had every bad job, he's had every hard job, been a head coach since he was 27 years old."
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Williams, assessing Davis' body of work with the Rebels, pointed toward the health of Daeshun Ruffin as one of the primary reasons it didn't work out for Davis.
Ruffin suffered a season-ending knee injury as a freshman, and struggled to fully recover from it this season as a sophomore. After appearing in 11 games, he stepped away from the program to focus on his mental and physical health.
"(Ruffin) completely changes their team if he's not healthy," Williams said. "I think a lot of the things that have transpired – I don't know if bad luck is the right word."
Williams went on to explain that he believes there is less distance between the top and bottom of the SEC now than when he arrived, with Alabama's outstanding year this season being an outlier.
That increased competition puts added emphasis, Williams explained, on the aspects of coaching that don't take place on gameday. The new college sports landscape also requires coaches to be flexible with their systems year-on-year, he believes.
"Your skillset has to be more than just coaching in between the lines, anymore," Williams said. "How you put together a roster 10 years ago, that's not how you put together a roster now. And so, because there's such roster volatility, your style of coaching has to change because it's very much plug-and-play.
"If your system requires so many reps of practice and so many game reps to be able to execute, then you probably have to change your system, because you can average five to seven newcomers every year."
David Eckert covers Ole Miss for the Clarion Ledger. Email him at deckert@gannett.com or reach him on Twitter @davideckert98.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Kermit Davis was SEC's top in-game coach for Ole Miss, peer says
