Texas Basketball: 3 players to watch in voluntary summer workouts

A player that looked like he could come out of the gates flying last season, but ultimately didn’t, is the former four-star recruit and now rising sophomore 6-foot-6 and 180 pound shooting guard Donovan Williams. This Fort Bend Elkins High School product and Missouri City, TX, native will be one of the key wings off the bench for Texas next season.

As one of three top 75 ranked 2019 high school prospects in the nation that Texas signed in that class, Williams was expected to help make an immediate impact for the Longhorns. But all that the Longhorns really got out of that recruiting class that was able to make any sort of early impact was power forward Kai Jones.

Williams ranked as the nation’s No. 73 2019 high school prospect, No. 11 shooting guard, and No. 9 prospect out of Texas (247Sports Composite). While Williams was very highly touted coming out of high school, he didn’t show that right away. He played in 26 games during his true freshman campaign with Texas (starting in one of them).

He averaged 12.1 points per 36 minutes, 3.6 rebounds, 1.1 assists, 1.8 steals, and 0.6 blocks. But that paled in comparison to his 3.5 turnovers per 36 minutes and 3.9 personal fouls. Williams posted a rather poor 7.1 player efficiency rating, somehow a box plus/minus rating at 0.0, and a 79.1 offensive rating/97.1 defensive rating.

There’s a large degree to which Williams could work on his game this offseason. If he’s getting back into the groove of things during summer voluntary workouts, hopefully we’ll see some of that progression right away next season.