Williams Getting Attention

The coattails aren’t this long, so the credit now goes to Julius Williams alone.

His opportunity to impress college coaches came because they spent so much time recruiting running back DeShaun Foster, Williams’ teammate and friend at Tustin High. But Williams has quickly made a favorable impression on his own. Expected as recently as a week ago to redshirt, he has instead become one of the fastest climbers on the Bruin depth chart, currently the third-string right cornerback and showing signs of earning another promotion to backup.

“We’re going to take a good hard look at him,” Coach Bob Toledo said.

“He’s impressed us enough to where he probably won’t redshirt. That’s where you never know. He’s going to be a good player.”

Williams chose UCLA over Oregon, Nevada Las Vegas and Wisconsin. He made his choice before Foster did. Two other former Tustin teammates, David Wilford and Stephen Sua, already were playing for the Bruins.

“DeShaun brought a lot of attention to the team,” Williams said of Foster’s role in his own recruiting. “And by him not being selfish and always giving a lot of credit to other people, it helped some of the other guys on the team get attention.”

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The Bruins today scrimmage for the first time, an event closed to the public. Because two others still follow in the next week, including one at the Rose Bowl, most of the prominent players probably won’t take part in the approximately 30 plays the first team will run. The second team will get about the same amount and the third team as many as time allows.

“Cade McNown, I don’t need him getting more than nine snaps,” Toledo said. “Same with Larry Atkins and a few other guys.”

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UCLA officials say Texas already has sold its allotment of 6,500 tickets for the Sept. 12 contest at the Rose Bowl, meaning this will be the largest traveling contingent ever for the Longhorns in a non-bowl game. In all, more than 70,000 tickets already have been sold.