Off topic- Victor victorious

[Tammo29@xxxxxxx]

I read this Globe piece this morning and just had to pass it along.
Why?  
I know Victor.  
A very good friend of my husbands was Victor's mentor growing up. For those 
that are unfamiliar with the mentor program, it's sort of like Big 
Brothers/Big Sisters.  It matches young boys without fathers in their lives 
with older males to give them a father figure.
Victor is a great, great kid. 
He used to come and watch my boys play ball when he was in high school.  Even 
my youngest, who was only about 10 at the time, and, believe me, some of 
those games were brutal to watch.  But he was there lending his support and 
that meant so much to those little guys to have a big time high school player 
in the stands.
 
He has worked so hard to get where he is today.  It's wonderful to see him 
get some recognition.  


Victor victorious

Williams puts on a show, and this year, Oklahoma State is still dancing

By Jackie MacMullan, Globe Columnist, 3/22/2003

e marveled at how they kept coming at his team, even as he exhorted his 
Oklahoma State teammates to pull away for good. Senior guard Victor Williams 
coaxed his boys into a 4-, a 5-, a 7-point lead, and that should have been 
it, but there was Penn again, tugging at the Cowboys' jerseys, stalling their 
momentum, hanging around just long enough so the Quakers could maybe - just 
maybe - break Oklahoma State's heart. 

Again.

''That's what I kept thinking,'' Williams admitted yesterday. ''I kept 
thinking, `Not again. I can't let that happen. I won't let that happen.' I've 
been through it enough times already.''

The pattern was always the same for Williams in his postseason collegiate 
career. Three years in a row, his team made the NCAA Tournament. Three years 
in a row, it was first round and out. Looking for an upset? Just pick whoever 
Oklahoma State was playing.

''We were aware of that,'' Williams said. ''Every paper I looked at had Penn. 
My high school coach, he was in Vegas, and he said, `Did you know they've got 
Penn beating you guys?' It kind of hurt us.''

You can imagine it hurt even more when it looked like it might be true. 
Although Oklahoma State displayed superior size and quickness, the Quakers 
displayed Ugonna Onyekwe, the wondrous forward from London who seized this 
game by the throat in the first half and wouldn't let go. He had already 
submitted 18 points on 7-of-8 shooting by the break, and his team was within 
1, 36-35.

If Onyekwe hadn't been dropping jaws with his fadeaway jumpers and 
spectacular reverse lay-ins, then maybe a few more people would have noticed 
that on the other end of the floor, Williams was blowing past the overmatched 
Penn backcourt, drawing help, then dishing off to his open teammates. Or 
maybe they would have realized he had already knocked in 15 points of his 
own, on a night one of his team's most reliable scorers, Tony Allen, was 
having trouble locating the basket in the first half.

Had they asked, they would have discovered coach Eddie Sutton had mugged his 
senior point guard in the week leading up to the tournament, reminding him of 
past failures, pushing him to step up and be responsible for the success of 
this team.

''Victor was calling me the junkyard dog,'' Sutton said. ''That's the name he 
gave me for when I get out there, and get after them.''

''He was on me pretty hard all week about being a leader,'' Williams said. 
''He was being real hard on me, challenging me, telling me I wasn't leading 
like I should out there. So I wanted to make sure I did that.''

He did it by using his quickness to beat Penn down the floor in transition. 
He did it by stepping up and rattling in perimeter jumpers whenever Oklahoma 
State looked to be in trouble. And, in the final minutes, when another season 
was on the line, he did it by ordering his teammates to play defense and 
close the deal.

''Victor lit a fire under us out there,'' said OSU forward Jason Miller. 
''Especially me. I was guarding Ugonna, and he was right in my face, telling 
me, `Lock up!' You could see it in his eyes. Victor was not going to let us 
lose.''

In the final 7 minutes 20 seconds, Penn did not score a single field goal. 
Its final bucket was a spinning turnaround jumper in the key by - who else? - 
Onyekwe. From that point, the Cowboys swarmed passing lanes, doubled, and, 
even sometimes tripled Onyekwe whenever he touched the ball. Penn's valiant 
senior would finish with 30 points, but he is going home today.

In the meantime, there was Williams, pulling up from the foul line for 2. 
There was Williams again, curling off a screen, and dropping in a 15-footer.

''He's a hell of a player,'' said Penn guard Jeff Schiffner. ''A lot of their 
stuff runs through him. He's so quick, it's difficult to contain him 
one-on-one. He came up with big shot after big shot. We knew they were 
perimeter-oriented, but he just kept stepping up.''

''It feels good to get the monkey off my back,'' acknowledged Williams, when 
the 77-63 win was finally in the books. ''I didn't want to have to go home 
and read and listen about how we went out in the first round again.''

Instead, he will be preparing to take on a young Syracuse basketball team 
amid a sea of tangerine fans. What are the chances that two schools would 
pick such a garish color as their signature uniform, then play for the right 
to be the best team wearing orange? No matter. Oklahoma State is now 
officially in the Final 32. That's what matters.

''Before the game today, I was thinking about last year,'' Williams said. 
''We lost to Kent State, and it was horrible. We didn't play well. I thought 
we made a lot of mistakes down the stretch, and that game kind of stuck in my 
mind.''

Yesterday, as the final seconds ticked down, there was Williams, streaking 
down the floor on the fast break. He could have easily punctuated this 
satisfying afternoon, this career-high performance of 29 points, with a 
thunderous dunk, but Williams chose instead to calmly lay the ball in, like 
he had been here hundreds of times before.

For a first-timer, he sure did look the part.

Jackie MacMullan's e-mail address is <A HREF="mailto:%20macmullan@globe.com";>macmullan@globe.com</A>.

This story ran on page F1 of the Boston Globe on 3/22/2003