Gross. 30% 3 point shooting from a guard you want to be a leading/double figure scorer is awful. How far are we going to get with that? I don't get it. The guy is a FR. Why not work on fixing it over the next 3 years and hope for better than 30%? If Evans and Cumberland are still around next year, he won't be expected to do a ton more than he does now. So that's 2 years to work on a better shooting form that can yield better results. Why would anyone be against that? It's so weird to me. This feels like the Gary Clark thing all over again. So many people argued after his FR year that we should just bulk him up to 250, have him play in the post, and maybe work out to 15 feet by his SR year. Then he could go overseas. I was treated like a lunatic for daring to suggest that he expand his game sooner, and out to the 3 pt line. Well look at him now. Where would we be had he not put the work in to be more than what he was already good at? Now he's an NBA prospect and we're a Top 15 team, mostly bc of him. If you want Williams to be a guy like that for UC some day, why resist developing him into a player who can actually be that? It's called player development. The whole point for us is that we are a 4 year program. Guys don't come in here as finished products. Williams is not a finished product. His shooting is holding him back. It always will if it isn't addressed. If our coaches take his shooting this year, shrug their shoulders, and let him ride out his next 3 years shooting the same way and hoping for 30%, then they aren't doing their jobs. Plain and simple. I'll bet money that we hear a lot this offseason about Williams working on his shot. It would be stupid of him not to. He has the length, athleticism, finishing ability, and will be an elite wing defender. That's big. And he can be a good player by just doing that. But accepting 30% as the ceiling of his 3 pt shooting during his FR year is insane to me. And maybe that's what he ends up being. Maybe he just can't shoot, maybe he reverts back to old form in games, I dunno. But what I do know is that it'd be silly to let him go through the rest of his career without addressing an Achilles heel. We develop players over 4 years here. It's not too late to help him be the best player he can be. But just rolling with the status quo for 4 years doesn't make any sense to me. And bringing up Sanders and KJ, someone bringing up Shaq Thomas yesterday...really? Shouldn't that set off alarm bells for you? No offense to those guys, but they weren't great players. Williams still can be. But not the way he shoots it now. His floor is a Shaq Thomas type. He can hit that floor whether he works on his shooting form or not. But he can hit a higher ceiling if he takes the next 3 years to work his ass off on a shoot with a cleaner looking release. It's not even the biggest deal on earth bc it's his off hand that is out of whack. His rotation still seems ok.
Really confused why any of this would be met with such strong resistance. I want Keith Williams to be as good a player as he can possibly be. Period. I want our team to be as good as we can possibly be. Period. I just don't see us being as good as we can possibly be down the road, if Williams doesn't make more progress than 30% as a 3 pt shooter.