Mike Williams III is no stranger to long odds, but he and LSU men’s basketball keep fighting

The second of five children, it shouldn’t surprise you that Mike Williams III is used to competition.

For years when they were younger, Williams and his three brothers couldn’t even play one-on-one basketball without it turning into a heated exchange.

“Every single time,” Williams said. “It was never not a fight.”

That suited Williams, though: he’s always been a fighter.

Some players have spotless high school resumes devoid of losses or significant hardship, but not Williams. His teams were talented, but their level of competition made for a constant uphill battle.

So when Williams came to LSU, he already had plenty of experience fighting long odds. Even as a freshman, he’s brought perspective and stability to a team and a program that needed it.

Ask Williams what kind of player he is, and he’ll tell you he’s a junkyard dog. He’s the kind of player who makes you feel him on defense, always wants to guard the other team’s best player and never backs down from a challenge.

He’s had to be, because the odds have frequently been stacked against him. 

“He’s a builder”

The walls of Dan Prete’s office, Williams remembers, were adorned with wood-framed images of his former players, evidence of a career spent molding future Division I athletes and professional stars in both the NBA and abroad.

Among them were Kevin Durant, Terrence Ross and Greivis Vasquez, all NBA players who started their careers at Montrose Christian School in North Bethesda, Maryland, where Prete was the associate head coach from 2001-2013.

Williams would pick Prete’s brain about these players, hoping to learn from them, emulate them, find out what made them successful, in hopes of one day joining them on the wall. Prete said they had the same thing in common: a willingness to work.

After his stay at Montrose, Prete eventually wound up as the head coach at Bishop Walsh School, a small Catholic school in the declining town of Cumberland, Maryland, that was on the verge of closure when he arrived in 2018. Its basketball team was far from nationally relevant.

“When I got up there, they didn’t even have uniforms,” Prete said.

In Prete’s first few seasons, he was faced with revamping the program and saw some moderate success, with a 20-8 record in his first year. As an accomplished and well-known coach, Prete’s presence was enough to draw in quality players, even international students.

In 2021, Prete used his connections to get Bishop Walsh invited to the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference, a newly-established eight-team league of the best high school basketball programs in the country, including IMG Academy, Montverde and Oak Hill.

The opportunity to play on the biggest stage in high school basketball — the NIBC was partnered with ESPN, and all of its games would be streamed on the platform — was enticing to many athletes, including Williams, who transferred to Bishop Walsh for his junior season.

Bishop Walsh, though, was out of its depth as a building program going against perennial national powerhouses. The team was younger and had a tighter budget than its opponents.

“The guys that we were playing against, they were already up there, established, five stars, stuff like that,” Williams said. “We’re going in there with just a bunch of unknown people.”

As a result, Bishop Walsh went just 2-20 in the NIBC during Williams’ two years, but there were plenty of close games, opportunities that slipped through its fingers.

“You know, you’re losing by six with six minutes left against the No. 2 team in the country and you lose by 16. You were right there,” Prete said. “But that’s the beginning of a program.”

According to Prete, it was difficult to motivate the team in the face of the reality of being outmatched. Williams led the team to keep at it; he had a coach’s mind and was able to understand that the grueling NIBC was making the team better as players and as individuals.

“He’s not scared of a challenge,” Prete said. “He’s a builder.”

Bishop Walsh never stopped fighting, and, in the final game of the NIBC slate in his senior season, Williams helped orchestrate a win over Oak Hill with 17 points, 7 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 steals.

Williams finished his senior year leading the NIBC with three steals per game and ranking fourth with 14.6 points, a result of hard work in the gym that didn’t stop once the season ended.

After the close of his senior season, with his classmates all taking it easy en route to graduation, Williams continued to meet one-on-one with Prete to work on his game.

He never had to be told to put in time in the gym, but Prete helped him channel that time more intentionally into what he needed to work on. Williams responded positively, always.

“‘What’s next, coach?’” Williams would say, according to Prete. “‘Give me more, coach. I’ll see you tomorrow, right, coach?’”

Without that eagerness to get better, Williams wouldn’t have been able to withstand such daunting circumstances at Bishop Walsh. He’d never get close to sharing the wall with Durant and Ross and Vasquez, who all had the same “give me more” attitude.

“It was like the same situation all over again”

Williams was getting recruiting buzz before he transferred to Bishop Walsh from Calvert Hall, where he spent his first two years of high school, but that new exposure gave him more prominence.

In his commitment announcement, streamed live by 247Sports in November 2022, Williams, a four-star prospect, said he was hearing from at least 25 different colleges daily.

The pitch that stood out was Matt McMahon and LSU’s. McMahon gave Williams a specific vision for him and pointed out things he should work on, all while staying remarkably candid.

“He never promised me anything, I can say that,” Williams said. “I respected that.”

Williams didn’t balk at the challenge of coming to LSU, a program still reeling from recruiting violations and the departure of former head coach Will Wade. He didn’t reconsider after the Tigers won just two games in conference play in McMahon’s first year.

LSU was at a clear disadvantage as a team working to lay a foundation while competing against the best of the best. Williams, though, knew a thing or two about being in those circumstances.

“Us being a new team going into, you know, a big stage,” Williams said. “The SEC is one of the biggest stages if not the biggest stage in college basketball, so it kind of was almost like the same situation all over again.”

When the season rolled around, Williams was surprisingly named the starting point guard. Former Tulane guard Jalen Cook was expected to man the spot, but as a two-time transfer, he was initially ruled ineligible.

In Williams’ first game, an exhibition match against Louisiana Christian, he had seven assists and no turnovers, displaying his ability to be unselfish and get others involved.

Another thing that stood out early was how fast Williams played and that, despite that, he always seemed to play in control. That’s useful for him as a scorer and playmaker, as he’s had nine games with double-digit points and six games with three or more assists.

Williams can also always be counted on for his leadership and his defense. Even as a freshman, he’s outspoken in the huddle, and he’s used his length and effort to come up with 1.1 steals per game. 

“He’s just going to get more and more comfortable,” sophomore forward Jalen Reed said. “We expect a lot from Mike.”

“He provides stability,” McMahon said. “He’s just solid as a rock, he’s tough as nails.”

Stability is exactly what LSU was looking for, and they’d found it from an improbable source: a freshman who’s used to being outmatched.

Sharpshooter

Shortly before LSU’s Dec. 13 win over Alabama State, it was announced that Cook and other ineligible two-time transfers would soon be able to play because of a federal court decision. After the game, Williams and Trae Hannibal were asked what to expect with Cook back.

They immediately looked at each other with a smile.

“It’s gonna be very fun,” Williams said.

Williams’ excitement came from an unselfish place. Cook’s return as the starting point guard would mean Williams would have the ball in his hand much less, but that’s something he was more than willing to accept for the good of the team.

The change has been equally beneficial for Williams, who has now thrived in an off-ball role where he’s receiving high quality catch-and-shoot looks. Cook’s presence has taken weight off Williams’ shoulders and unlocked his 3-point shooting. 

In Cook’s third game back on Dec. 29 against Northwestern State, Williams went off for 20 points with six 3-pointers on nine attempts, earning him SEC freshman of the week. That performance added to his already growing confidence and since that point, he’s shot 42.9% from beyond the arc on 3.8 attempts per game.

Three-point shooting has become the most prominent part of Williams’ game, but that wasn’t always the case. In high school, he preferred to play downhill or go to his midrange. In fact, in his junior year, he made only 22% of his shots from outside.

Williams said in between his junior and senior year, he fixed a hitch in his jump shot, leading to him jumping to 37% his senior year. Prete, though, thinks it was less about his mechanics and more about his comfort level.

“To me, shooting’s confidence,” Prete said. “I think he actually had a pretty good looking shot, he just needed more repetitions to make it smoother. It was a young guy getting confidence and getting into the gym.”

When you watch Williams shoot nowadays, that confidence is the first thing that strikes you. He has no hesitation from catch to release: he’s letting it go as soon as it hits his hands.

“Sometimes, I’ll shoot a shot where I can’t believe I shot it because of how fast it was,” Williams said. “I didn’t even get a chance to process that I shot the ball.”

Part of that speed comes from his coaches empowering, or, rather, demanding him to shoot. When Williams subs out of a game after passing up a shot, he’ll ask his coaches if he should’ve taken it. The answer is always an emphatic yes. “Shoot it.”

“When a coach is yelling that, you ain’t got no other option,” Williams said with a laugh.

“When he’s making them, we all tell him to keep shooting it,” Cook said after Williams made four 3-pointers in a win over Arkansas. “So that’s what we need him to do.”

Getting the ball out fast has also been a necessity with other teams beginning to realize that Williams is a shooting threat. As opposing scouting reports change, defenders close out harder on Williams, giving him a shorter window to shoot.

Williams’ willingness to evolve his game is just another way he’s helped try to get LSU over the hump, even as the team has fallen short many times. The Tigers have fought to the end against almost every SEC opponent, even when they’ve fallen behind by 20-point deficits. 

Until recently, they’d failed to turn all that effort and those comebacks into wins. For some, though, even coming close was impressive given the stage of team-building LSU’s program is in. But not for Williams.

“That’s not good enough for us,” Williams said. “We know who we are and what we can be, so we need to get there.”

LSU is starting to turn the corner, with impressive comeback wins over No. 11 South Carolina and No. 17 Kentucky representing rare successful clutch performances and the end of a 1-6 stretch. That’s palpably positive momentum for the program.

Though it’s uncertain what the team will look like next year with graduations and likely incoming transfers, Williams will almost certainly have a larger role as he continues to grow into a team leader for an LSU team seeking to return to prominence. 

Williams has fought his whole life to turn underdogs into winners, and he won’t be stopping anytime soon.