(Oh, crap. Only three days til basketball season. An out-of-town conference put me behind the 8 ball, so I gotta step this up. Read the previous Rotation Guys post here.)

I’m going to do something crazy and put the “bottom line” summary at the top. I know it’s crazy someone bring me my meds omg.

Anyway, here goes: Jordan Williams could end up being the best out of Maryland’s four current big men, but as of now, he’s probably the worst. However, he is also their second-least injured and/or ineligible post man, so he’ll get plenty of run. That pretty much sums it up.

Assuming Dino Gregory does in fact get an extended suspension, Williams is probably gonna be one of the first, if not the first, guy off the bench. (Either him or Bowie is my guess.)

The 6′10″, 260 pound J-Will — can I call you J-Will? — is well-known to Terp fans. He’s a freshman from Torrington, Connecticut. Our first legit center prospect since, what, Mike Mardesich? Ryan Randle? He captured a lot of peoples’ attention — including mine — in a grainy YouTube video, in which the opposing crowd chanted “What’s a Terp?”, to which Williams responded by sprinkling their court with shards of backboard glass. Please allow me to post that video for the eleventy hundreth time. Nice.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh_oIvJyGNY]

So the guy is strong. The guy is tall. The guy is tough in the paint. The guy can dunk, and, unlike some of our other recent big men, he seems to have no reservations about doing so. What’s the downside? As of now, the downside is that he’s mainly upside. He’s got a high ceiling, but he doesn’t seem especially close to it. There are concerns about his slowness, and that he’s not shredded like Mr. Olympia, but I think that will resolve himself as the season progresses and he plays his way into college-level shape. Ditto for his somewhat limited offensive arsenal. (Padgett is probably ahead of him in all these areas, hence the reason why he’ll probably start over J-Will.) Here’s an interesting and promising nugget on his offense, though: he is silky smooth from the charity stripe. He went 5-6 against IUP, so that bodes well for his future development as well as this season, in which I’m guessing he’s gonna get hacked a lot.

Bottom line: probably 15-17 minutes a game for Williams out of the box. As previously mentioned, early part of the schedule, if Dino is suspended, could be good seasoning time for Jordan. I’m high on this guy. Once he gets into the swing of things, I think he’s gonna be a player for us, and I see that happening sooner rather than later.

(Photo credit: Baltimore Sun)