Williamson Has the Heart of a Lion

Jim Williamson was nearly horizontal, airborne, about to fall flat on his back. But he still had the ball in his hands as the final second was about to tick off the clock.

Which is never good news for the opponent.

Williamson tossed up a 12-foot shot with his right hand, breaking his fall with his left. The ball bounced off the glass two feet above the rim and fell through the net as the buzzer sounded.

Loyola Marymount had defeated Hawaii, 82-80.

The tape of that game, earlier this season at Hawaii, was showing in Coach John Olive’s office the other day. He had popped the tape in and cued it to the end when asked what makes the little guard such a huge asset on his basketball team, which plays San Diego tonight in the first round of the West Coast Conference tournament at Santa Clara.

“I always put the ball in his hands,” Olive said of Williamson. “He doesn’t plan these things; they just happen. Great performers don’t plan. He knows he’s going to run this play or this maneuver, and whatever develops, develops. He’s going to read the situation instinctively and make the play.”

He drove the length of the floor and made a scoop shot, in heavy traffic, in the final seconds for the last field goal in an 83-80 victory over USC this season. He did the same thing at the buzzer to give the Lions a victory over Cal State Fullerton. Last year against Fullerton, he won the game with a basket from half-court at the buzzer.

And according to those who have followed his career, little Jim Williamson--a 5-foot-10 junior--has always had a knack for coming up big in tough situations.

“Jimmy is always taken for granted because of his size, and people don’t think he can play,” says Lamont Henry, Williamson’s coach at South Torrance High. “When he first came here, I was one of them. I’m looking at him and I’m saying, ‘No way.’ And the guys said, ‘He can play coach, he really can.’ ”

And he did.

In his senior season at South Torrance, having sprouted from 5 feet as a freshman to all of 5-9, he averaged nearly 19 points and 11 assists in leading his team to a 28-4 record. He was even better in the postseason, with four games of at least 24 points and a 33-point, nine-assist effort in a 91-82 loss to Stais Boseman and a powerful Morningside team in the state regional final at the Sports Arena.

“I played against him twice in high school and both times he killed us,” Boseman says. “But I didn’t think he would be that great of a college basketball player because he was kind of little, and he didn’t look strong enough. Then we played together on the same team in the summer league, and he surprised me. He destroyed everyone.”

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Because of his size, Williamson was hardly recruited until his postseason performance gave him some exposure.

Olive, a former assistant under Rollie Massimino at Villanova in his fourth season as coach at Loyola, remembers first seeing Williamson play in a summer-league game between his junior and senior seasons at South Torrance, only he didn’t know it was Williamson at the time.

“I saw him and my reaction was, ‘That little kid can play. I love his heart. But my God he’s small.’ And I filed that thought away,” Olive said. “And then I hear about this kid in Torrance, I get calls from the Williamsons [Jim’s parents], from friends and alumni, and make the connection: ‘Oh, that’s the kid I saw in the summertime.’ ”

Williamson didn’t sign a letter of intent during the early signing period, and then Olive began actively recruiting him.

Fresno State and USC recruited Williamson after he had all but decided on Loyola Marymount, where his father, Duane, was an all-conference player as a senior in 1971-72.

The transition from high school to college was more difficult than Williamson thought it would be, especially against players who for the most part were a full head taller than he was. Williamson was 5-10, but he weighed only 150 pounds.

“I had no idea what was going on,” said Williamson, who made up for his lack of size with his ballhandling. “The players were quicker and bigger, and you’re just trying to adjust; you just can’t imagine what it was like. And then you learn how to adjust, but the freshman year was tough.”

Williamson didn’t start the first 12 games.

“He was not playing as assertively,” Olive said. “By the 13th game though, we felt he deserved the chance to start, and he has not been out of the starting lineup since that day.”

With Williamson as the starter at point guard, the 1-11 Lions won three of their next four games. In one of those victories, he made a running, four-foot hook shot with three seconds to play to give his team an 82-80 upset of Gonzaga.

The Lions finished 6-21.

Last season they improved to 13-15. And with backup point guard Terryl Woolery sidelined the entire season for disciplinary reasons, Williamson played practically every minute of every game.

He almost single-handedly kept the Lions in a game against Notre Dame, playing all 45 minutes and scoring 22 points in a 76-73 overtime loss.

By the end of the season, the minutes had begun to take their toll. Williamson was sluggish and scored only one point in the first round of the WCC tournament against Santa Clara, but still dished off seven assists, many of them to center Ime Oduok, who scored 22 points as the Lions registered an 87-83 upset.

In the semifinals against Portland, Williamson ran out of gas, scoring only five points in a 74-68 loss.

Olive takes part of the blame for that performance.

“He was completely worn down,” he says. “He wasn’t able to start the second half [against Santa Clara] because of dehydration. And the next night against Portland he was just a shell of himself.”

Williamson’s 36 minutes a game this season are still high, but with Woolery back he is being spelled from time to time. An all-conference selection for the first time, Williamson leads the team in scoring in league play with a 12.4-point average and is second to Oduok (16.6) overall at 13.4 points.

Time will tell how the Lions, 18-10 overall and 8-6 in the WCC, will fare in this weekend’s tournament. But if the game is close and time is running out, look for the littlest Lion to take it to the hoop. One way or another.

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WCC Tournament

FIRST-ROUND GAMES

At Santa Clara

* No. 2 Gonzaga (19-7, 10-4) vs. No. 7 St. Mary’s (12-14, 5-9), noon

* No. 4 San Francisco (15-11, 8-6) vs. No. 5 Portland (16-10, 7-7), 2:30 p.m.

* No. 1 Santa Clara (19-7, 10-4) vs. No. 8 Pepperdine (9-17, 2-12), 6 p.m.

* No. 3 Loyola Marymount (18-10, 8-6) vs. No. 6 San Diego (13-13, 6-8), 8:30 p.m.