University of North Carolina Athletics
LUCAS: Williams Ready to Assert Himself
October 1, 2002 | Men's Basketball
Oct. 1, 2002
by Adam Lucas, Tar Heel Monthly
It's no surprise that Jawad Williams would choose a boxer as inspiration for the tattoo on his right shoulder. The sophomore's body ink includes the phrase, "Loved by few, hated by many," which he first saw worn by Mike Tyson.
Williams didn't pick the words because of any particular affinity for Tyson, but he did spend his childhood growing up around boxing. His father, Joe, was the 1982 Cleveland Golden Gloves champion, winning the light heavyweight division at the age of 32 despite fighting against much younger men.
The elder Williams managed a recreation center in Cleveland for 15 years. It was a part of town, located just a block from the Williams family home on East 143rd Street in east Cleveland, where trouble was easy to find. But trouble-in the form of gangs or drugs-never came looking for Jawad Williams, because his father made it plain to everyone that his son was on the straight and narrow.
"I don't know karate, but I do know ka-razy," Joe Williams would tell people when asked what might happen if anyone tempted Jawad.
Joe Williams coached the center's boxing team, and although Jawad's older brother, Tony, won a Golden Gloves novice division championship in 1983, the family quickly learned that Jawad had other interests.
"We couldn't get him to keep boxing," Joe Williams said. "He would be running around with his boxing gloves on bouncing the basketball."
With his family history, the move made sense. Jawad's mother, Gail, played college basketball at Cleveland State, and sister Nasheema Hilton played collegiately at Vanderbilt and professionally in the ABL. The brother and sister had some heated one-on-one games at the rec center, but even that couldn't prepare Williams for the Atlantic Coast Conference.
He lacked confidence early in the season, but then broke out with a series of hustle plays in a home game against Georgia Tech. After a scoreless first half and with the Tar Heels trailing, Williams back-tapped a missed free throw to create a basket, following that with a layup and a three-pointer. To cap the sequence, he forced a turnover and dunked at the other end.
For the rest of the season, he looked more like the versatile player who had been a McDonald's All-American in high school and less like a freshman. In late January, the coaching staff worked with Williams to add a pump fake to his offensive repertoire. Against Clemson just a few days later, it was already a part of his game, sending a defender flying with a head fake and gliding to the basket for a dunk.
The sophomore's goal is to do that consistently this season instead of sporadically.
"I had spurts where I asserted myself last year," Williams said. "Watching some games, I realized I could have done it in a lot of other games. A couple of games I had 20 points and I realized I could have done that every game...I have to work on asserting myself every game, rather than picking and choosing my moments."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com
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