Beat the Clock : Wayne ‘Buzzer-Beater’ Williams Is Looking for One More Shot

IRVINE —  Wayne Williams, never too shy to tell a coach exactly what he thinks, tried to get a word in during a timeout in an ASICS Summer Pro League game at the Bren Center the other day.

Only nine-tenths of a second remained. Williams’ team trailed by three points.

“Coach,” the former Cal State Fullerton player said, interrupting Mike Arnold, “put me in. I’m the Buzzer-Beater.”

Arnold ignored him, and Williams took a half-sullen stroll to the end of the bench. His teammates know his history--the 25-footer that beat Nevada Las Vegas in overtime his freshman year, the half-dozen or so other desperate heaves he made to win games or beat halftime clocks during his three years as a Titan. They remember all that--and Williams’ penchant for second-guessing a coach, the way he did John Sneed at Fullerton for most of three seasons.

They laughed, patted him on the butt. Williams took it good-naturedly, then watched as teammate Jeff Von Lutzow, the former UC Irvine player, missed the desperation three-pointer at the end.

The Summer Pro League is not so much about winning games, but about winning attention, and Williams, his college career finally over at 24 after playing his final season at Cal State San Bernardino, is hoping for a chance to play overseas.

“It’s much easier for a big guy. That’s where the market is,” Williams said. “The teams overseas usually already have their point guard.

“But I want to continue to play. I’m going to keep trying until I think I’m too old to play.”

Williams’ first college season was probably his best, but it began bizarrely--an omen for a career that took him through two schools and three coaches.

Preseason practice was just under way in 1988 when George McQuarn quit abruptly as the Titans’ coach. Williams wondered if he should transfer, but decided to stay and play for Sneed.

For a while, it looked like a good decision. Williams started at the point as a freshman, and the team went 16-13 behind the often spectacular play of Williams, Mark Hill and--most of all--Cedric Ceballos, who was on his way to the NBA.

By Year 2, things were souring. Williams wondered aloud why the Titans didn’t play more man defense and why they didn’t run more. He considered transferring, but Sneed, in a move he would come to regret, urged him to stay.

By the end of the 1991 season, the players were in open revolt. Williams proved one thing: He has a point guard’s leadership skills. After a loss to Pacific in the 1991 Big West Conference tournament ended the Titans’ 14-14 season, Williams and Joe Small complained to the press about Sneed’s discipline methods, his strategies and his substitution patterns.

Even though Sneed’s downfall didn’t come until the end of the next season, the outcome was set. His relationships with most of his players and co-workers were strained enough that it would have taken an NCAA tournament appearance to save his job.

Williams wouldn’t last the summer. He was declared academically ineligible and left school, transferring to San Bernardino. He left Fullerton with 744 assists in three seasons--only 207 shy of Leon Wood’s career record. Williams was gone, but at the end of the next season, Sneed was, too. Bill Shumard, then athletic director, decided not to renew Sneed’s contract.

“It wasn’t just me,” Williams protests now. “It was me speaking for the team, but other players felt that way. When I spoke up, everybody made me the leader.”

Williams says he could have stayed at Fullerton, using a redshirt year to recover his eligibility, but he doubts it would have turned out well at that point.

Instead, he enrolled at San Bernardino to play for Reggie Morris, who had been his coach at Los Angeles Manual Arts High School. Williams sat out one season under transfer rules, then another to continue working on his academics (Division II programs don’t have the same five-year limit on a player’s career that Division I programs have.)

He was San Bernardino’s best player last season, but still, controversy accompanied him to the end.

Williams admits he and Develle Walker, who had been his high school teammate, got into a fight during a pickup game at the school gym last September. But he denies the accusation that he pulled a gun out of his gym bag and threatened Walker with it. The San Bernardino County district attorney declined to pursue the case, but Morris later said that he thought the publicity contributed to the end of his coaching tenure at the conclusion of the season.

Williams said he feels for Morris--and says that though other players didn’t get along with Morris, he certainly did. And he insists the allegation against him was false.

“Not true, not true,” he said. “If I did that in a gym full of people, why didn’t anybody else see it?”

Six years ago, Williams looked like he had a good college career ahead of him. Now, he only has a tumultuous one behind him.

“The only thing I’m disappointed about is that I didn’t get to finish at Fullerton like I wanted to,” he said.