‘He keeps it real.’ Top recruits discuss Mo Williams’ impact with UK basketball
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- New UK basketball coach Mo Williams is helping the Wildcats recruit high school players.
- Williams arrived at Kentucky after previously being the head coach at Jackson State.
- Top recruits like Cayden Daughtry and King Gibson talk about Williams’ recruiting impact.
Mo Williams’ time with the Kentucky men’s basketball program can still be measured in weeks instead of months.
It was only in late March when news broke that Williams — an accomplished point guard at both the college and NBA levels who won the 2016 NBA championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers — was leaving his post as the head coach at Jackson State to become an assistant coach at Kentucky.
Williams’ arrival in Lexington was part of a larger shakeup for head coach Mark Pope’s staff this spring which saw the addition of Keegan Brown as UK’s director of roster management and the departures of former assistant coach Jason Hart to SMU and former associate head coach Alvin Brooks III to North Carolina State.
Williams’ position with UK carries some similar responsibilities to that of Hart’s: Working with backcourt players and serving as a primary recruiter for high school prospects. While it remains to be seen how the Cats’ new-look backcourt of Zoom Diallo and Alex Wilkins will perform under his guidance, Williams has already made a major impact in his role as a recruiter.
Kentucky’s top newcomer from the 2026 high school class is Williams’ son, Mason, a four-star point guard prospect with a lead-by-example reputation.
Earlier this month, Pope scored arguably his most important high school recruiting win to date by landing a commitment from class of 2027 prospect Ryan Hampton, a small forward who is ranked as a consensus top-10 player in the rising senior class. Hampton is the highest-ranked player to ever commit to play for Pope, and Hampton singled out Williams as a major reason why he committed to the Cats.
“Let’s be honest, Coach Mo Williams helped close the deal,” Hampton told 247Sports when he committed. “He’s been a friend of my dad for a long time, and so my family has trust in him.”
And looking down the line, Hampton may not be the only 2027 prospect who ends up praising Williams following a commitment to Kentucky.
Top class of 2027 basketball recruits talk about UK’s Mo Williams
The NBPA Top 100 Camp has long been considered a top evaluation setting for rising high school basketball stars.
Since the event began in 1994, more than 300 camp participants have gone on to NBA careers, including ex-Cats such as Devin Booker, Tyler Herro, De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, Rajon Rondo, Reed Sheppard and Karl-Anthony Towns.
This year’s edition of the NBPA Top 100 Camp, which featured Rondo as a guest coach, took place last week in Rock Hill, South Carolina. It occurred during an evaluation period for college coaches, and Kentucky was well represented. Five UK coaches — Cody Fueger, Mikhail McLean, Pope, Nick Robinson and Williams — were at the event to keep tabs on UK’s current and emerging targets across the 2027, 2028 and 2029 recruiting groups.
At the time of the event, 15 campers held a Kentucky scholarship offer. The Herald-Leader spoke to a majority of these players, and Williams came up frequently when these prospects discussed their evolving Kenucky recruitments.
“He keeps it real,” Jaxson Davis, a class of 2027 four-star point guard prospect, said of Williams. “He’s not going to fake you. He’s not going to tell you what you want to hear. Right away, he told me he knows exactly who I am, exactly what I need to get better at. He’s keeping it real with me right away.”
Davis said his conversations with Williams dated back to May, when the UK assistant got in touch with him during a USA Basketball youth national team training camp in Colorado.
“I’ve talked to Mo Williams three or four times. He’s a really cool guy,” said Cayden Daughtry, a class of 2027 five-star point guard who is known for his scoring and distributing skills. “He always talks about how similar me and his game is. He says we play similarly. Him getting the job (at Kentucky), I feel like he’s going to give me the opportunity to do what I do.”
Williams was a standout floor general during his college and pro careers. Williams was a two-year star at Alabama who earned SEC Freshman of the Year honors in 2002 and was an All-SEC Third-Team selection in 2003. He was then taken in the second round of the 2003 NBA draft and scored more than 10,000 points across 13 NBA seasons. In addition to winning an NBA title, Williams was chosen as an NBA All-Star in 2009.
While Daughtry admitted he needs to study up on film and highlights of Williams from his playing days, he understands the value of being compared to such an accomplished player.
“The stuff that I’ve heard about him, ‘Hey, good enough.’ That’s a good comparison,” Daughtry said.
At the NBPA Top 100 Camp, prospects also made it clear that they see value in learning from a coach with Williams’ list of achievements.
“I know he’s a big-time point guard, and I’m a point guard. So it would be cool to learn from another point guard on a coaching staff,” Davis said. “... It’s a huge appeal. He played in the NBA as a point guard, and that’s what I want to be one day. So just learning from someone who has that experience, that’s really high level and I feel like that’s needed at a lot of college programs, learning from someone that’s been there and where I want to go one day.”
“It’s obviously just credibility toward everything that he says,” Daughtry said. “I don’t want to say it means more, but it does mean more when an NBA guy is telling you something and he’s been through the whole process.”
Mo Williams provides a personal recruiting touch for Kentucky
Williams has only been on Kentucky’s coaching staff for a handful of recruiting evaluation periods, but he’s no stranger to the basketball world of relationship building. Williams was the head coach at Jackson State for four seasons, and he led the Alabama State program for two seasons prior to that. His coaching credentials also include time as an assistant at Cal State Northridge.
This varied college coaching experience has allowed Williams to refine his recruiting approach. This spring, Williams has often been the UK coach that’s called a prospect to inform them that a Kentucky scholarship offer has arrived.
Sometimes, these conversations between Williams and a recruit have stretched on for hours.
King Gibson, a class of 2027 five-star combo guard, said he’s enjoyed “a lot of long conversations” with Williams as part of his blossoming UK recruitment.
“He kind of played the same position (as me), so him talking to me about certain things about how being a combo guard isn’t just being a passer, or just being a scorer,” Gibson recalled. “You’ve got to do a lot of different things. He gave me a lot of feedback about even going to the league and doing those things... Those long conversations definitely taught me a lot.”
Gibson echoed the thoughts expressed by Davis and Daughtry regarding potentially being coached by Williams at Kentucky.
“It would be great, learning from somebody that’s already been there, that’s already took those steps as a guard, as a combo guard,” Gibson said. “... Just having that coach on the staff, it sets a different milestone in my development process. You get to go there. You get to learn from somebody. And you get to apply that in the workouts and games.”
Williams’ decades of basketball experience have been on full display in his brief time with the Cats. Whether it’s at AAU events such as the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League or at the NBPA Top 100 Camp, Williams has been a popular man while decked out in Kentucky gear, greeting former coaches, teammates and other figures from his basketball past.
When UK announced the addition of Williams, Pope praised the “toughness, experience and authenticity” that he boasts, which Pope said would resonate with players. Last week, Pope went even further in his compliments when discussing Williams with the UK Sports Network.
“He just comes with an intensity and humility and a relentlessness to his work that reverberates through our whole staff and our entire organization,” Pope said. “He’s going to be a difference-maker for us, for sure.”
That’s already proved to be true with high school recruiting. And Williams is likely to play an outsized role in Kentucky continuing its current momentum with prospects.
