BASKETBALL: North Star’s Williams Signs With Oklahoma State
LINCOLN–(KFOR Apr. 13)–Four months after he announced his de-commitment from Nebraska, Lincoln North Star boys basketball star Donovan Williams has made his decision on where he will play college basketball next season.
Williams announced through an interview on SI.com via Twitter early Monday evening that he’s decided to play at Oklahoma State, eliminating other schools like Kansas State and Texas, who seriously recruited him.
As for the Cowboys, Williams will “get to play with the best player in the country (All-American guard Cade Cunningham).” Williams considers Cunningham (who led Monteverde Academy in Florida to the national No. 1 ranking) “close friends.”
“We talk a lot, so I thought that could be a positive in this whole thing for me,” Williams said in his interview with Sports Illustrated’s Jason Jordan.
Williams, who is the first four-star prospect out of Lincoln since Rivals.com and 24/7 Sports started ranking college propsects, has hopes of furthering his basketball career, under the guidance of Cowboys head coach Mike Boynton.
Williams believes Boynton will help his abilities and talents that could perhaps make him “go pro.”
As a senior at North Star, the 6-5 Williams led the team in scoring with 28 points a game, coming off a knee injury last spring that sidelined him for the rest of the AAU season. Williams returned in early January and picked up from where he left off the previous season, in dominating fashion.
Williams also broke North Star’s single-game scoring record three times in his career. He scored 43 points as a sophomore in a win over Fremont, then this past season he scored 44 in a win over Lincoln Northeast (a game attended by Kansas State head coach Bruce Weber) and the following game, he scored 50 in a three-point overtime loss at eventual Class A state champion Bellevue West.
The Gators, though widely considered to return to the NSAA boys state basketball tournament, ended their season in the district semifinal with a loss to Gretna. Williams was highly influential in North Star’s run to the 2019 Class A state tournament, eventually finishing in the semifinals to Omaha South, who went on to win the title.
Earlier in April, Williams was named Nebraska’s Mr. Basketball, one of the latest honors he’s received for his senior year.
