During his long stay on Arizona’s recruiting radar, Brandon Williams took three visits to Tucson that showed him all about the Wildcats’ past and present.
But he needed to see the future, too. So before the well-regarded Los Angeles point guard announced Tuesday that he will play for the Wildcats in 2018-19, he took a fourth unofficial visit to campus last weekend to learn more about how UA coaches might use him.
Clearly, Williams liked what he heard and saw: The 6-foot-1, 180-point scoring point guard chose Arizona over Gonzaga, USC, UCLA and Kansas.
“They’ve been recruiting him for the last couple of years and they’ve been coming on real strong lately,” said Williams’ stepfather, Chris Wright. “We needed to come over to see how he’d be used. … Coach (Sean) Miller and the whole staff were about making that change to a lead, scoring point guard, somebody who can get a bucket when they need a bucket.”
Actually, a look at the past helped get that point across: Williams’ speed, scoring and distribution skills are similar to that of Mark Lyons, who made some game-winning plays as a scoring point guard for the Wildcats in 2012-13 before the UA largely switched to true point guards T.J. McConnell and Parker Jackson-Cartwright in recent seasons.
Lyons is “who he’s being compared to,” Wright said of Williams.
Provided Williams can recover from an unspecified knee injury that has sidelined him for nearly a year, he might have more upside, too.
“He’s an elite talent,” said Russell White, Williams’ coach at Crespi Carmelite High School. “He can play multiple ways — he can be a scorer or a distributor. That’s what makes him special. He can be a scorer but he doesn’t have to score to be happy. He was a scorer for us, but on his club team he was a distributor.”
Williams played as a freshman and sophomore at Crespi with current USC standout De’Anthony Melton, making what White called an immediate impact.
“We saw flashes of brilliance in him” as a freshman, White said.
But after playing for the California Supreme club along with incoming UA freshman DeAndre Ayton last summer, Williams missed his junior season at Crespi because of his knee injury. White declined to specify details but said it was not a torn ACL. Williams had surgery and is aiming to return to the court this summer with the intention of playing a full senior season at Crespi.
In the meanwhile, though, Williams’ injury resulted in him dropping slightly in the 2018 recruiting rankings. He’s still rated as a five-star talent by ESPN and 24/7 Sports, though Rivals and Scout have him in the four-star range.
However, California-based Scout analyst Josh Gershon said Williams is still the West’s best point guard, having shot nearly 38 percent from 3-point range during high-level EYBL play last summer. The website ranks Williams the 10th best point guard nationally in 2018.
“We haven’t seen him,” Gershon said. “But in the time that he hasn’t been out there, there’s really been no one that’s emerged to challenge him for the top spot (in the West).
“He’s got good size — he’s 6-1 with a 6-6 wingspan so he has really long arms. He’s quick and he can shoot the ball. He’s got a quick release, handle and speed to create off the dribble. I think he’s a scoring point guard but he can fill whatever role they need.”
Williams will be entering the UA just after the departure of Jackson-Cartwright, another Cal Supreme alum, while incoming combo guard Alex Barcello is projected to be a sophomore in 2018-19. Gershon said both Barcello and Williams are interchangeable with their ability to score or distribute.
“They can both really shoot it,” Gershon said. “Brandon’s quicker and Barcello has more of a scoring mindset, he’s more of a kid who can play off the ball.”
Williams joins Los Angeles power forward Shareef O’Neal in the early beginnings of what figures to be a large UA recruiting class in 2018. Arizona could lose six or more players next spring between graduation and early pro departures, since it will have three departing seniors plus Ayton, who says he’s staying for just one season. Wings Allonzo Trier and Rawle Alkins have already considered leaving for the NBA, too.
“Over my dead body”
New UA President Robert Robbins threw his support firmly behind UA coach Sean Miller, when asked by the Arizona Republic if the coach might leave for Ohio State now that Thad Matta is out.
“The Ohio State University is a great university, but they are not going to get coach Miller,” Robbins told the Republic. “They will have to come over me to get him, as the saying goes, over my dead body.”
Robbins also said Miller is a “tremendous, tremendous individual who has had great success on the court. I know he’s disappointed he couldn’t bring a national championship to the state, given that the Final Four was here.”
Exhibitions set
Arizona’s two exhibition games are now confirmed: On Nov. 1 against Eastern New Mexico and Nov. 5 against Chico State.
The UA will not play a closed scrimmage because it is hosting the two exhibitions in order to meet its minimum home game quota. Teams can either have one exhibition against a non-Division I team and a closed scrimmage against a Division I team, or two exhibitions against non D-1 teams.
Fogg back in “Tournament”
Former UA guard Kyle Fogg will rejoin defending champion Overseas Elite in The Basketball Tournament this summer after spending last season playing in Malaga, Spain.
Last summer, Fogg was named MVP of the $2 million winner-take-all event, earning a personal share of $174,000.
This year’s tournament, which features several teams loosely associated with schools or regions, will also include Lyons and former UA forward Kevin Parrom playing for Team Fancy, a collection of mostly New York-area players.
Jazz take look at Comanche
Former UA center Chance Comanche is one of six players scheduled to work out for the Utah Jazz on Wednesday, June 7, according to the team’s Twitter account.
