Unguarded Moment

Marcus Williams makes impeccable decisions during basketball games.

Connecticut assistant George Bailey says the Husky junior is “a quintessential point guard. He sees the game very clearly. He knows every second where everybody’s going.”

Teammate Rudy Gay suggests, “Sometimes I think Marcus has eyes in the back of his head.... He just sees it all and makes it happen.”

When Connecticut, the top-seeded team in the Washington, D.C., Regional, plays fifth-seeded Washington tonight in the NCAA tournament’s round of 16, Williams will direct a posse of Huskies who are generally considered the most athletically talented unit in the nation.

Williams must decide when and where and to whom to pass the ball. He must decide about himself whether to dish or shoot, drive or pull up. And he needs to make those decisions in a split second.

Mostly, Williams makes them right.

There was a geometric elegance to his play Sunday when Connecticut moved past Kentucky in a second-round game in Philadelphia. Williams handled the basketball as if it were part of a shell game. Where is it? In his left hand? Or right hand? Nope, it was over in Gay’s hands and he was dunking it. How did it get there? “Sometimes,” Gay says, “I don’t even know.”

But for all the good decisions Williams has made on the court, he made one horrendous off-court mistake -- one he can’t explain.

“No reason at all for what I did,” the former Los Angeles Crenshaw High star says.

In August, Williams and teammate A.J. Price were arrested on suspicion of the theft of four laptop computers valued at $11,000 from a campus dorm.

Williams was charged with four counts of third-degree felony larceny. After a judge heard the case, Williams was granted accelerated rehabilitation, which is often given to first-time offenders. He was sentenced to 18 months of probation and ordered to complete 400 hours of community service.

While Price received a similar sentence by the courts, the differing punishments given by the university raised eyebrows: Price, a redshirt freshman, was suspended for this entire season; Williams was welcomed back to the Huskies on Jan. 3 -- in time for the start of the Big East Conference play.

Coach Jim Calhoun says Price received the tougher punishment because he originally lied about his involvement in the crime.

“Marcus owned up to the truth immediately,” Calhoun says. “To me, that indicated he understood what was wrong and was immediately willing to learn and accept the consequences.”

But that explanation didn’t stop a season-long debate surrounding the team. The state’s leading newspaper, the Hartford Courant, wrote in a Nov. 3 editorial that Williams and Price were “fortunate to attend a school with stars in its eyes and championship banners in its sights.”

In another story, Courant sports columnist Jeff Jacobs suggested that Williams’ punishment was less severe because Williams was more necessary to Connecticut’s national championship chances. That led to a public episode of name-calling between Calhoun and Jacobs.

Meanwhile, Williams’ play has been spectacular. He is averaging nearly nine assists a game and he had a team-high 20 points in the win over Kentucky.

He has kept his mouth shut at away arenas where students chanted, “Where’s my laptop?” even before the Huskies would get on the floor. He knows his personal reputation has been forever tarnished.

Williams has been barred from the dorms, so he lives in an off-campus apartment with his mother, Michele, who has left husband Kelly and 15-year-old daughter Marchele back in South Los Angeles.

Michele chokes up when she speaks of missing Marchele’s recent birthday party, but she is fiercely committed to keeping her son moving forward.

“Getting that phone call from Marcus, it was the hardest thing I’ve dealt with,” Michele says. “My heart was broken. I cried. I couldn’t even believe it. Then I wanted to strangle Marcus. He had never been in trouble before.”

Michele and Kelly kept a close watch on Marcus through his three years of starring in basketball at Crenshaw. “We knew the trouble in the neighborhood, saw the gangbangers and the drugs and the guns,” Michele says. “We wanted none of that for Marcus and I can honestly say that until last August the worst thing Marcus ever did was not clean up his room.

“I was hearing this phone call from my son telling me what he had done and I’m thinking, ‘This can’t be Marcus. He knows better.’ He told me he was afraid he was going to be kicked out of school and that he knew he deserved it. But he has never been able to give me a reason why.

“I kept asking him, ‘Why, Marcus?’ He didn’t need the money. He has what he needs. His grades are good, his basketball was going good.”

Why, Marcus? He hears that question a lot.

“I know what people think,” Williams says. “It’s like my mind just went away. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. I don’t think I was thinking.”

Williams was caught because he tried to pawn the stolen computers.

“I asked him, ‘Marcus, did you think nobody would know you? You’re a basketball player at Connecticut!’ ” Michele says. “And he told me, ‘Mom, I don’t know. I just don’t know.’ ”

Williams spent his final year of high school at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia. He had hoped to come back west to play basketball in college.

“I wanted to go to UCLA or Arizona,” he says. “Steve Lavin was still coaching UCLA and said they were going in another direction, and Lute Olson was going after Mustafa Shakur first.”

Stevie Thompson, Williams’ AAU coach and himself a former Crenshaw player who went to the Big East for college -- he played for Jim Boeheim at Syracuse -- said he was puzzled when he heard Williams was in trouble.

“I never knew Marcus as a kid prone to being bad,” says Thompson, the coach at Cal State Los Angeles. “He came from a good family, he had people watching out for him.”

But Thompson said it can be hard to move across the country and be far away from the people who had kept track of your behavior and friends and attitudes.

“You are 3,000 miles from home, you have this whole new world opening up and you don’t have parents to answer to,” Thompson says. “When you’re closer to home, your parents can see who you are hanging with, keep track a little bit. You maybe are a little bit more aware of not wanting to disappoint the people who knew you when, you know?

“That’s no excuse. I don’t know all the details with Marcus, but I do know I was shocked when I heard and that wouldn’t be the case with every kid.”

Both Williamses -- mother and son -- say that they are immensely thankful that Calhoun stuck by his point guard.

“Calhoun pretty much saved my son’s life,” Michele says. “My biggest fear was that Marcus wouldn’t be able to finish his education.

“Calhoun has taken heat for this, but Calhoun chose to back my son. He backed my son because he’s known Marcus for three years and he knows what type of person Marcus is. It was not about the basketball. It was about knowing my son and giving him a second chance.”

Shortly after Michele moved in with Marcus, she began her own version of tough love. When Marcus was studying, Michele would suddenly start shouting at him, “Where’s my laptop?”

When he was watching television or playing a video game -- “Where’s my laptop?”

“Marcus needed to stay under control and understand that he brought this on himself,” Michele says. “He was going to hear stuff every night and he would have no cause to let it get to him. There are consequences.”

Williams says he learned from his mistake.

“Right is right, wrong is wrong,” he says. “No getting around it, no excuses. You do wrong and you should pay the price. People will make up their mind about me because of this. I hurt my family, I hurt my friends. For no reason. I truly don’t know why I did it. Just stupid I guess.”

When Connecticut finished off Kentucky on Sunday, most of the Huskies were jubilant, high-fiving and back-slapping and giggling.

Williams walked off the court, his face expressionless. There had been no chants from the crowd, but Williams still never looked into the stands.

“I just try to do my job now, go about my business, keep to myself and do my best,” he says. “Whatever’s said is said and I must move on.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Southland survivors

The 21 players from Southland high schools who reached the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament:

*--* Player College High School Arron Afflalo UCLA Compton Centennial Brandon Bowman Georgetown Westchester Jamal Boykin Duke Fairfax Cedric Bozeman UCLA Mater Dei Darren Collison UCLA Etiwanda Ashanti Cook Georgetown Westchester Jordan Farmar UCLA Taft Ryan Hollins UCLA Muir Marcus Johnson Connecticut Westchester Bobby Jones Washington Long Beach Poly Kelvin Kim UCLA El Toro Sean Marshall Boston College Eisenhower Lorenzo Mata UCLA South Gate Kenton Paulino Texas Fremont DeAndre Robinson UCLA King Michael Roll UCLA Aliso Niguel Josh Shipp UCLA Fairfax Craig Smith Boston College Fairfax Joel Smith Washington Lompoc Jamaal Williams Washington Corona Centennial Marcus Williams Connecticut Crenshaw

*--*

Note: Kenton Paulino finished his high school career at Maine Central Institute, Joel Smith at Brewster Academy in New Hampshire, Marcus Williams at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia.