Sports Then and Now

Derek Kellogg has the UMass Minutemen contending for an NCAA title.

1 – Chaz Williams

The best live sports betting sites on the internet, such as Sportsbetting.ag, will tell you that the biggest reason Massachusetts is likely to snag an NCAA tournament berth this season is Williams, a 5-9 sparkplug of a guard who has led the Minutemen in scoring at 15.9 points per game while handing out a dazzling 7.4 assists per game. The scoring and passing Williams has injected into this team’s offense has made UMass very hard to guard. The extent to which Williams has broken through this season – a season that might not have unfolded if Williams had left early for the NBA draft – is a product of the patience displayed by Massachusetts head coach Derek Kellogg, who elaborated on his relationship with Williams and the need for Williams to stay one more season in order to become a more NBA-ready player:

“The reality of it is, my job is just to get him the right information. Sometimes when you’re the coach talking, it can get construed that you’re asking me to come back for yourself or the team. The decision was, do you want to be a potential second-round pick or do you want to go back and do something special? The things that were important to Chaz and his family, I think he does want to be on line to graduate. He does want to do something special at a university and try to lead a program and a team back to national prominence and get to an NCAA Tournament. I explained to him, you’re on the verge of doing something not a lot of players have done here. You’re on the verge of taking a program and helping get a program back and resurrect a program. Let’s shoot for something special.”
Read the rest of this entry →