WATCH: Justice Williams announces decision on LSU future
One of LSU‘s brightest young stars, Justice Williams announced where he will play his sophomore season with a highlight video from his freshman season. With the announcement on LSU Basketball’s social media, Williams will return to the Tigers for next season.
Justice Williams returns to LSU
Williams’ return to LSU for his sophomore season is great news for Tigers’ fans looking to see him develop into a bigger piece of the team. Last season as a freshman, Williams averaged just over ten minutes per game while limited in his usage. His impact on the defensive end was certainly felt however, as he recorded 11 steals in just over 200 minutes of total game time.
The biggest part of Williams’ announcement is that he now joins Mwani Wilkinson as the few current LSU players committed to returning for next season. The vast majority of the Tigers’ team last season is moving to the NBA or transferred out via the transfer portal. LSU is undergoing a period of major change with their basketball program as former head coach Will Wade was fired as a result of the NCAA giving LSU a notice of allegations that detailed misconduct by Wade and the program.
New head coach Matt McMahon will now have another weapon at the guard position to work with in his first season. Although Wade found limited use for Williams last season, he was clear on what he believed the young guard was capable of.
“Justice is more of a combo guard than a true point,” Wade said Feb. 7. “If we played him at full-time point guard right now, it wouldn’t be good for anybody, including him. He’s getting better, he’s playing well. He’s done some really, really good things for us. But, I mean, he should be playing high school basketball right now, and we’ve got him playing in the best conference in the country. So I think he’s done a very admirable job. I think he’s done a very, very good job.
“But you’ve got to understand, too, he also got here in August. He didn’t go through the summer with us, he didn’t go through strength and conditioning with us. There’s a lot of stuff he just didn’t go through. So asking him to play full-time point guard for us right now would not be doing the right thing by him or our team.”
Justice Williams was ranked as the No. 8 combo guard in the Class of 2022, per the On3 100 rankings. He reclassified to the 2021 class just in time to join LSU for the 2021-22 season.
On3’s Billy Embody contributed to this article.