EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the third story in a series on the top local high school boys’ basketball players of the past decade.
As successful as Jorden Williams was on the basketball court at Sewanee, the standout guard may have learned even more off of it.
Of course, the McCallie School graduate is pleased with what he accomplished during his time with the NCAA Division III Tigers from 2013 to 2017: He earned All-Southern Athletic Association honors three times, scored 1,472 points to rank fourth in program history and is Sewanee’s all-time leader in 3-pointers made (280). But Williams, the son of Cleveland High School assistant principal Jacqueline Lane, also majored in African American studies during college and has made the sort of connections that not only helped him consider Sewanee in the first place but thrive during his time there and beyond.
Not that he really wanted to go to Sewanee after averaging just less than 17 points per game and shooting 39% from 3-point range for the Blue Tornado as a senior. What he had been unable to do at McCallie, where he played behind several Division I signees, was carve out a definitive position, so college coaches weren’t sure whether he could be a pure point guard.
But what going to Sewanee allowed him to do was be the player he wanted to be. In his first very college contest, he scored 17 points in a loss to Furman, a D-I program. He had 16 in his third game and 23 in his fourth. By then, he was facing double-team defenses.