Every team, no matter what sport, must have vocal leaders and outspoken athletes, and without question, sophomore Teondre Williams falls into another category on the Oregon men’s basketball team. His voice, a borderline whisper, is so quiet and full of humility that it’s hard to believe he is the same person continuously flying above the rim.
The past two years have been a roller coaster of emotions for Williams. Overcoming injuries on the court and learning how to deal with life in the spotlight off of it, Williams finds himself in the midst of another Duck losing streak and a recent downturn in his own playing time.
Coming out of Meadowcreek High School, the Atlanta, Ga.-native was ranked the 28th-best shooting guard by ESPN.com and averaged 19.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game during his senior campaign. According to Scout.com, Williams received offers from Arkansas, Cincinnati, Clemson, Florida State, and Georgia before signing his letter of intent to play for the Ducks.
But even then scouts were questioning Williams’ consistency despite his tremendous athletic ability, something that has clearly not been solved since arriving in Eugene.
“Coming in, I was very confident about everything,” Williams said. “Then I had kind of a little setback during the middle of the year and it kind of threw me off, but I’m getting back to being more confident like I was at the beginning.”
The setback Williams referred to came after he and teammate LeKendric Longmire did not fulfill their academic requirements for the fall term. Both players were still eligible to play, but 13th-year head coach Ernie Kent decided to discipline the players by removing them from their starting roles and giving other players the majority of the minutes.
Williams dealt with similar setbacks as a freshman as well.
Adding to an already disappointing freshman campaign, Williams and fellow freshmen Michael Dunigan and Josh Crittle were arrested at gunpoint by Eugene police in late March. The three were using pellet guns to shoot at ducks and geese in a nearby creek, and were cited on misdemeanor charges for hunting or using guns in a city park.
“He’s still trying to figure it out,” senior Tajuan Porter said. “He’s a sophomore and he’s still got a lot to learn.”
Around this time last year, Williams also had to battle a left foot injury, which kept him out of several key practices and games. In order to get back into shape, he rode the stationary bicycle for conditioning and worked on the underwater treadmills in the Casanova Center, but neither provided that crucial game experience a young player needs.
By the end of the season, Williams had missed 15 total games and 12 of the Ducks’ final 14 to close out the year.
Frustrated and looking for answers, he returned home for the summer to help find what he had been lacking. With some words of wisdom from his mother, Kenya Wooley, Williams returned to Oregon with a rejuvenated sense about him.
Making his way into the starting lineup for the first time in his career, there was no questioning Williams was an entirely different player than the season before. In the Ducks season-opener against Winston-Salem State Williams went for 19 points, two rebounds, two assists and one block in just 16 minutes of action.
Two of those buckets nearly brought the house down as Williams skied above the opposition for two of the biggest dunks in recent Oregon history.
“The biggest thing for us,” Kent said, “and I don’t care whether it’s home or on the road, it’s just playing with consistency and some belief that we can get the job done.”
The belief and self-confidence that was so outwardly evident in Williams during the early season has since diminished, and again left Williams looking for answers.
“I don’t really (know),” Williams said of how to get back to where he was two months ago. “I just got to get my confidence.”
The tricky thing about confidence is that it can’t be worked out in practice and really can’t be taught. It’s a state of mind that players achieve when they are completely comfortable in every aspect of the game, and somewhere along the line Williams — and the rest of the Oregon squad — lost sight of that.
“He’s going to get better,” Porter said. “Once he figures it out, once everybody figures it out, we could be a pretty good team.”
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