Young Buffs get younger with exit of sophomore Williams

By B.G. Brooks, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published June 12, 2008 at 4:08 p.m.

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The exit comes as no surprise, but an alarmingly young University of Colorado men's basketball team has lost one of its few experienced players.

Coach Jeff Bzdelik on Thursday confirmed the departure of Jeremy Williams, a talented sophomore from Memphis, Tenn.

"He never called . . . he never showed back up," Bzdelik said of Williams, who left CU ineligible after the spring semester, ostensibly to return home and discuss his future with his parents.

Bzdelik said his program would "move on" toward a 2008-09 season in which the Buffaloes likely will be without an upperclassman in their starting lineup.

"We'll be young, but it will be good young," said Bzdelik, noting that while his second squad will experience growing pains, four incoming freshmen have been rated by recruiting services among the top 40 players at their positions.

Williams' departure makes him the seventh player to exit Bzdelik's program since CU hired the former Air Force coach in April 2007, leaving only three players on the roster who were recruited by Bzdelik's predecessor, Ricardo Patton - sophomore Levi Knutson, junior Dwight Thorne and senior Jermyl Jackson-Wilson.

Williams, a 6-foot-7 forward, used his redshirt season to sit out the 2007-08 season for academic reasons. As a freshman under Patton, Williams averaged 7.7 points and 4.6 rebounds.

Last season, Bzdelik frequently acknowledged Williams' outside shooting accuracy - Bzdelik values that trait in frontcourt players - and how good a fit Williams could be in CU's offense.

EYE-OPENING TRIP: Bzdelik recently returned from an eight-day USO-sponsored trip to Iraq, where he found reaffirmation that "the human spirit has no limits" and put his job in perspective.

"There's no significance to what I do," he said. "If we have a bad day, we lose a basketball game. If (the U.S. military) has a bad day, someone loses his life."

Bzdelik was in a traveling party that included four other college coaches and a former NBA executive.

ETC.: Buffs freshman forward Toby Veal, of Savannah, Ga., has been selected to compete on a U.S. team that will play later this month in France. Bzdelik said Veal expects to be on campus in early July. . . . Bzdelik's brief courting earlier this month by the Chicago Bulls brought general manager John Paxson to Colorado for a 41/2-hour meeting with Bzdelik. "They called, I said I'd listen. . . . It was flattering," said Bzdelik, adding his commitment is to CU. . . . Former Buffs player Richard Roby, the school's career scoring leader, remains confident a broken right hand won't keep him from being drafted, according to a report in the Boulder Daily Camera. He was injured in a predraft camp last month in Orlando, Fla.

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