In the early days of college basketball, Williams was one of the most dominant players in the nation for a two-year span. He led Mizzou to a combined 34-2 record and a pair of Missouri Valley Conference team championships in his two seasons on the hardwood. As a sophomore in the 1920 season, he was named an all-American by the Helms Foundation as the Tigers went 17-1 and ranked No. 2 in the end-of-season Premo Polls. The Tigers duplicated that record a year later and ranked No. 1 in the final Premo Polls. Williams averaged a then-MU record 18.3 points in 1921 and was named the national player of the year by the Helms Foundation and was a first-team all-American for the second straight season. In his first varsity game, he scored 20 points to match the entire output of the Iowa State team in a 55-20 Mizzou victory. Later that season, in the first game legendary Kansas Coach Phog Allen ever coached against Missouri, Williams led the way to a 32-27 overtime victory. In his junior season he scored 48.4% (311-of-643) of MU’s total points for the season, and he nearly matched the entire season output of points scored by Tiger opponents who scored 335 in 18 games. His 311 points stood as the MU single-season record until 1951 and nobody at MU surpassed his scoring average of 18.3 points until Bob Reiter in 1954 (19.6). Williams was a well-rounded athlete who lettered in both track (high jump and hurdles, winning a Missouri Valley Conference title in the high jump one year) as well as tennis at Mizzou, while also finding time to serve on the MU student-council. He left Mizzou after his junior season to play professionally on the AAU circuit, which was the equivalent to the NBA back then, and he played on two AAU national championship teams while winning countless individual honors.
