Noah Williams
C, 7’0” (250)
N/R ESPN (4-Star Portal)
Almost as soon as the Tide’s jet had touched down back in Tuscaloosa, Coach Nate Oats was on the horn to Lewisburg, PA luring Patriot League player of the year Noah Williamson to the Capstone:
Last year, we spilled countless liters of ink lamenting the lack of defensive rebounding, as well as the want of an impact big that could do more than protect the basket — one who was more than a lob option. It was, and has been, ‘Bama’s most pressing need almost every season. That sort of player is also what has separated the nation’s merely very good teams from its championship ones.
Perhaps that answer has finally arrived in the very large frame of legit seven-foot Noah Williamson, the do-it-all star from Bucknell.
It would be unfair to quite call him a one-man team for the Bison, but that is not far off. The All-Patriot junior was superb on both ends of the floor, averaging 17.6 per game and 7.7 rebounds per night. The 250-pounder shot almost 62% from the floor, was one of the nation’s best at drawing fouls, and is an elite defensive rebounder, to go with above-average rim defense. He is not a great shooter from the stripe, but the massive Latvian is a legitimate three-point threat for a big man, shooting 32% from beyond the arc. He can put the ball on the floor, is a decent distributor for a pure center, and establishes position very well on the blocks.
Williamson made both the all-defensive team in the Patriot League, as well as won conference POTY honors.
That initial assessment is a pretty good overview of what the utility big man brings to the table: good rim defense, a legitimate offensive option, decent handles, and great rebounding.
Williamson is from Latvia and was a bit of a late bloomer. He attended high school in Riga, and had to go to finishing school, as it were, with a post-graduate stint at Kristaps Porzingas Basketball Academy, before coming to the States and tutoring at powerhouse St. Thomas More academy. But even that didn’t get him on many teams’ radars — He was a zero-star prospect, despite his size, and committed to the first D1 that offered: the Bucknell Bisons.
He’s just your run-of-the-mill, decade-long overnight sensation: Williamson has had to work and develop every year to improve, and he did.
From a public school in Riga to the Basketball Academy
From Porzingas Academy to St. Thomas More
From More to Bucknell
Bench player as a freshman backup center
First full-year as a starter made 3rd team All-Patriot League
Breakout 2024-2025: First-team All-Patriot, Player of the Year, Defensive Player of the Year.
That is the sort of incremental progress and growth Nate Oats loves. It shows a player who’s not yet reached his potential but is capable of improvement, and above all, is amenable to coaching.
There are legitimate questions about how much of a learning curve the true Senior will face. He is not the athletic powerhouse of someone like Aiden Sherrell, but he does so very much on both ends of the floor, and has the age and experience, that you can’t help but think his will be transformational play like we saw with Grant Nelson.
How he will respond to the step up in competition, and then the brutal SEC grind, remains the biggest mystery with Williamson, not his all-around game — he’s already played himself from an unranked high school prospect to a 4-star portal big man in just three years. That’s impressive enough on its own.
He will need to work on some areas of his game too. He’s physical enough to handle doubles and fight through contact, but you’d like to see him go to the rim with more violence. Indeed, he will need to once he faces the Tide’s murderous schedule. And he will likely need to work on his conditioning and footwork too. Williamson was not asked to move without the ball very much, and the Bison were not a tempo team. Both of those are certain to be areas of emphasis during the preseason conditioning period which began this week.
Nevertheless, the ceiling could be very high for Williamson.
Welcome to Tuscaloosa, Noah
Roll Tide
Poll
Does Noah stick to center, or move to a hybrid 4/5 position?
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Move to power forward
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Hybrid forward-center
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