MILWAUKEE -- Just two days before Marquette is scheduled to take on Florida in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament, Golden Eagles head coach Buzz Williams was forced to deal with an off-court distraction.
As the Marquette band, along with hundreds of students and fans, gathered outside the team's practice facility to send the Golden Eagles off to Phoenix with cheers, Williams was delayed by more than 45 minutes to his scheduled meeting with reporters. He was tied up reading a report that had just become public, one that listed six of his players who had been cited seven weeks earlier for their presence at a Milwaukee nightclub despite being under the legal drinking age of 21.
When Williams did enter the room, with an inordinate amount of reporters on-hand, he delivered the following opening statement, which was not pre-written:
"I was just notified of an article that was written in the (Milwaukee) Journal Sentinel. That was handled on Jan. 29 with our team; that was a Sunday morning. It was handled with our administration on Jan. 30. Some of the commentary and the quotes and the dates, I'm not sure how all that matches up. I'll do my absolute best to try to figure out how that's played itself out.
"That's the only thing I'm going to say about that. If that's the reason why you guys are here, I can be done."
When a local news reporter attempted to follow up on what that meant for the availability of Marquette's players for the Sweet 16 game, Williams was perturbed.
"Maybe I wasn't clear in what I said," Williams said in response. "We handled it on January the 29th within our team. We handled it within our administration on January the 30th -- that was a Monday. That's all I have to say about it. Was that not what I said?"
When the reporter said the answer to his question had not been addressed, Williams asked for his name and news outlet, then turned his attention to a different question.
The Journal Sentinel report said the six players -- freshman guard Todd Mayo, sophomore guard Vander Blue, sophomore forward Jamail Jones, freshman forward Juan Anderson, freshman guard Derrick Wilson and junior guard Jake Thomas -- each received a $374 fine from Milwaukee police for being present at a club where alcohol is served.
As Williams stated, the players were at the club on Jan. 29. However, they were not served tickets by police until March 12.
Marquette's athletic director, Larry Williams, told the Journal Sentinel the school knew about the situation long before the citations were handed out to the players.
As it relates to Thursday's game, Larry Williams said no further penalties will be issued.
"Discipline was imposed through the team, the athletic department and the university," Larry Williams said in a statement. "Since we have dealt with this issue, none of this prevents any of our players from participating in the NCAA tournament. We are looking forward to Thursday's game."
Later in Buzz Williams' press conference, he was asked to respond more specifically to the timing of the report, with six weeks passing between the players being at the nightclub and the fines being served.
"I'm not sure about the timing of the report," Williams said. "It mentioned through the open records act on February the 29th, so that was a month after the incident. And our kids got the citations on March the 12th. That doesn't add up to me. I'm not in the media, and all I can do is be accountable to our kids. And they've been accountable and I've been accountable."
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