Are you surprised Jaylin Williams has emerged already as the Razorbacks’ best overall player in less than two years at the college level?
If you’ve been following high school basketball in Arkansas, especially Fort Smith Northside basketball, you are not surprised. Not in the least.
The pipeline from Northside to Fayetteville has flowed for many years with basketball talent, going all the way back to the 1960s when Tommy Boyer arrived on campus from Fort Smith and became an All-Southwest Conference player who twice led the nation in free-throw percentage.
Boyer was followed by Almer Lee, the flashy Northside guard who was the first black player to letter at Arkansas in the late 1960s.
Ron Brewer, who led Northside to a 30-0 record in 1974, helped put Arkansas basketball on the national map along with Sidney Moncrief and Marvin Delph, known collectively as “The Triplets”.
There were others and Williams followed his former high school teammate, Isaiah Joe, an All-SEC performer with the Razorbacks who now resides in the NBA with the Philadelphia 76ers.
Let’s put it this way: Give me Williams, Brewer, Joe, Keith Wilson and Matt Jones, a quarterback who played some basketball for the Hogs, and you can have any other five from the state.
Make it, take it. And I’ll give you the ball first.
Oh, and don’t forget about Northside’s powerful girls program under Rickey Smith that delivered high school All-American Jersey Wolfenbarger, who is starting as a freshman for coach Mike Neighbors‘ women’s team at Arkansas.
“When you’re talking Northside basketball, you’re talking about the best in the state,” Northside boys coach Eric Burnett said during a school assembly after the Grizzlies and Lady Bears each brought home state championships in Class 6A. “The kids, they know what’s expected of them.”
The Arkansas men’s team has won sixth consecutive primarily behind the play of guard JD Notae and Williams, who was selected as the SEC co-Player of the Week following wins over Texas A&M and South Carolina, where he scored a career-high 19 points.
Williams continued to fill up the stat sheet on Saturday when Arkansas (16-5) defeated West Virginia 77-68 as part of the Big 12 vs. SEC Challenge.
More from WholeHogSports: Full coverage of Arkansas' win over West Virginia
The 6-foot-10 forward had better days shooting the basketball than what he showed on Saturday. But he still managed 12 points, a couple of steals and drawn charges, and a career-high 15 rebounds, all of which impressed the color analyst for Saturday’s national broadcast of the game.
“For a big guy, he sees the play before it happens,” said Joe Kleine, a former Razorback who spent 15 years in the NBA. “He’s got a little bit of that point guard vision in him. He’s got great anticipation.”
Williams has nearly doubled his playing time from when he was a freshman. Arkansas fans love his ability to find the open man with precision passes and in his willingness to stand his ground with opponents barreling into him. Even as a freshman with limited playing time, he still led the Razorbacks with 16 charges last season.
In high school, Williams was selected by this publication as the Division I Player of the Year in both his junior and senior years. He burst onto the scene as a junior when he averaged 20 points per game and was selected as the MVP after Northside won the state championship in 2019.
Williams had plenty of scholarship offers for college, yet he decided to stay home and play for the Razorbacks like many Northside stars before him.
There’ll be more, which suits Arkansas fans just fine.
Keep ‘em coming.
Keep ‘em coming.