University of North Carolina Athletics
LUCAS: Jawad Williams Hopes to Add Confidence and Weight This Summer
May 10, 2004 | Men's Basketball
May 10, 2004
by Adam Lucas, Tar Heel Monthly
Carolina basketball history is littered with players who made constant attempts to gain weight but were never successful.
And then there's Jawad Williams.
The rising senior gains weight faster than a sportswriter living next to a Krispy Kreme franchise. Last summer, he packed on 19 pounds to his formerly wiry frame. After a difficult junior campaign that saw him lose some of that weight due to injuries and other factors, he has added over 10 pounds since the end of the season. He began the 2003-04 season at 225 pounds, dipped to 215 by March, and says he's now up to 230.
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That wasn't the only part of the past year that was up-and-down for Williams. He averaged 19 points and 8.1 rebounds in his first seven games, a stretch that included three 20+ point performances and three double-digit rebounding games. But after suffering a concussion against UNC-Wilmington, his numbers dipped to 10.5 points and 4.6 rebounds per game over the rest of the season, during which he surpassed 20 points just once (a home win over Maryland) and did not have another double-digit rebounding game.
"Injuries were the whole thing with him," Roy Williams says. "He got tentative. When he got tentative, his shot wasn't falling and he wasn't getting rebounds. That contributed to his offensive numbers going down so much."
Over his first two seasons, the Cleveland native had showed a surprising touch from the three-point stripe, averaging almost 35 percent from beyond 19 feet, nine inches. He proved to be especially comfortable from the top of the key, where he consistently knocked down open jumpers against opponents unfamiliar with his shooting range.
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SUMMER FOCUS: "I've got to keep getting stronger, and I want to work on my shooting and ball-handling."
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Those opportunities declined this season as teams tried to force him away from the areas where he was most comfortable. His three-point percentage dipped to 30.5, and he went 0-8 from beyond the three-point line in his final five games.
"Other teams watch tape, too," he says. "A lot of teams were sending somebody right there because that's where I'm used to playing.
"When I got hurt, I lost confidence in my shooting. I had a few games where I thought I was getting there, like the Miami game (15 points and six rebounds in 23 minutes), but then I got hit again and things started going downhill. I felt like everything was going wrong."
He'll spend the summer trying to regain that confidence, which had him looking like an All-ACC player before the Wilmington game. He also wants to add at least 10 more pounds of muscle to help Sean May and David Noel shoulder some of the load in the post for the Tar Heels.
As he enters his final year at Carolina, he's got added incentive to work out with even more intensity over the summer months.
"I want to go out with a bang," he says. "My freshman year we were 8-20. The second year we were a little better, and then this year we made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Now I want to win it all. That would be a great story, to go from being here when everything was at the bottom to going out with a championship."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
