Ezra Williams on last Georgia basketball team to win in NCAA Tournament, this year's Bulldogs
These days, Ezra Williams is helping to train and develop a new generation of players nearly 5,000 miles from where he starred for Georgia basketball.
Williams lives in Vienna, Austria, with his wife Julia following a pro career for teams in Turkey, Italy and Austria after playing in what’s now the G-League.
He currently runs a basketball academy for about 600 youth throughout Europe, placing them in high schools, prep schools and colleges.
When he’s finds the time, Williams has pulled up and watched about five Georgia games this season — usually a day later because of the time difference — during a season that has landed the No. 9 seeded Bulldogs in an NCAA Tournament first-round game Thursday against No. 8 seeded Gonzaga in Wichita, Kan.
Georgia is seeking its first NCAA Tournament win since March 15, 2002, when Williams and the No. 3 seeded Bulldogs beat No. 14 seeded Murray State 85-68 in a late-night game from the United Center in Chicago.
“That’s incredible actually to think about,” Williams said Tuesday. “In my mind, I thought we had won at least one game since we finished up.”
Williams was an All-SEC guard who averaged 16.5 points per game in the 2001-2002 season and scored 10 points in the win over Murray State.
That win was later vacated by NCAA sanctions under coach Jim Harrick that involved academic fraud.
“I mean, we were winners so they have to respect that at the end of the day,” said Williams, who is from Marietta and returned to UGA and graduated in 2018 with a degree in human development and family sciences. “You can’t just like sweep that under the rug and and act like it never happened.”
Georgia (20-12) will try to break a four-game NCAA Tournament losing streak against Gonzaga (25-8) in the 4:35 p.m. game.
Dennis Felton’s 2008 team that improbably won a tornado-disrupted SEC Tournament lost as a No. 14 seed to No. 3 seed Xaiver 73-61 in Washington, D.C.
The Mark Fox-led Bulldogs lost in first-round games in Charlotte, falling as a No. 10 seed to No. 7 seeded teams both times. They lost to No. 7 Washington 68-65 in 2011 and 70-63 to Michigan State in 2015.
“We want to make some noise,” Georgia coach Mike White said. “We want to play well.”
White was asked what will it take for this year’s Georgia team, which ended the program’s 10-year NCAA Tournament drought, to advance?
“Gotta play well, that’s it,” White said. “Gotta prepare well. Our approach has to be on point. Got to defend. For both of us, the lack of familiarity, us not having played them here these past few years, is what it is. So the preparation is important, but I think both teams probably have a group of guys, I know we do for sure, that our extremely excited and will be really focused on the scout. Then I think when it’s the big stage, when it’s the NCAA Tournament, especially for our guys, outside of (Clemson transfer) R.J. Godfrey, it’s going to be new for all of our guys. It’s how do you respond that first adversity and that seventh adversity because it’s coming throughout the game.”
That 2002 Georgia NCAA Tournament win came the same day “Ice Age” was released in theaters and the Red & Black student newspaper’s front page included a headline “US Forces Search Caves” after air strikes in Afghanistan targeted terrorist organizations more than six months after the 9/11 attacks.
Gentry Estes, now a columnist with The Tennessean, wrote for the student paper about Georgia trying to break another streak then: “Lately March has just made Georgia basketball mad. The Bulldogs have lost their last six postseason games and haven’t won in the NCAA Tournament since 1996.”
That changed when Jarvis Hayes scored 31 points and Rashad Wright added 16 points and 10 assists as the Bulldogs blew open the game in the second half against Murray State.
The Bulldogs were knocked out in the round of 32, losing to No. 11 seed Southern Illinois 75-72.
Williams set a Georgia record with 93 3-pointers that season, but said the end of the season was tough personally because he lost his older brother, Antwonne, who was shot to death about a month earlier in the Bankhead neighborhood in west Atlanta.
“I always feel a bit of guilt because I was so young and still a kid and had to deal with what I had to deal with personally,” Williams said. “I think Jarvis had a really great game which set him up to really move forward in that NBA process and for me it was just a difficult time but it made me who I am now.”
Williams was part of a Georgia team the next season that was 19-8 and ranked No. 21 when it withdrew from the SEC and NCAA tournaments in 2003 after an internal school investigation that led to NCAA probation.
“It’s even more disheartening thinking back on that situation and our team and the way we were pieced together,” Williams said. "We were built to make a run to the final and meet Carmelo (Anthony) in the championship.”
Williams was on the first Georgia team to play Gonzaga, a 95-83 win in the Peach Bowl Classic in Atlanta on Dec. 15, 2002.
Williams didn’t remember much about that game even though he scored 21 and Jarvis Hayes had 29.
It was Gonzaga coach Mark Few’s fourth season. His teams have never missed an NCAA Tournament.
Williams said Georgia may have shown inconsistency this season, but he likes the team White has assembled.
“I think our team, we’re actually built for the tournament,” he said. “We have some pieces with Asa Newell. We have some good guard play and with the tournament if the guards can kind of get hot, but you also have to have an inside presence. We have that with Asa and the other bigs…Right now is the time in the season you can kind of find some momentum. I think this is a good time for these guys to step up and put it all together.”
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Ezra Williams on Georgia's last NCAA Tournament win, this year's Bulldogs
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