More than two decades later, the memories are still fresh for Williams of one of the more challenging periods of his career.
“Just to be honest, I look at my career record and those three years hurt my career record because we weren’t on a level playing field with great basketball teams,” Williams said. “I gave my guys a lot of credit. I think it was Walt Williams’ senior year, and I remember after the season was over we weren’t eligible to go to the NCAA, a reporter said to them, ‘You’ll play hard next year with a chance to go to the NCAA tournament again.’ That was the biggest slap in the face. No teams ever played harder. We had some our best teams during that time. We were playing for the love of the game.”
