25 Adam Williams

Adam Williams was born September 19, 1985, to Sandra Sue and Tex Williams.  Growing up in St. Albans, a small town just west of Charleston, West Virginia, tucked between the towns of Nitro and Hurricane by the Kanawha River, all Williams wanted to do was play for the Cats.  He spent the first six grades in Catholic school before moving to a public junior high in the seventh grade.  “He wanted to play ball,” his mother, Sandy, said. “I told him that if his grades came down, the uniform was going back on. But that’s never really been a concern.”  Williams carried a 4.0 grade-point average in high school.  He was also voted Mr. Red Dragon, the school’s name for its homecoming king. He averaged 19.7 points, 8 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game as a senior at St. Albans High School.  In 2004, Williams earned the Evans Award as the top high school basketball player in West Virginia.

Williams, who originally verbally committed to play for Kentucky in the summer of 2002, signed a letter of intent to play for Kentucky on the first day of the early signing period on November 12, 2003. The Cats also signed 6-2 guard Ramel Bradley of the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., making them the first members of UK’s class of 2004.  “The day was everything I hoped it’d be,” Williams said. “All I wanted to do was play for Kentucky since I can remember.”

Williams decided to delay enrolling at UK until 2005 to help the Wildcats, who were overbooked by one scholarship and spent one year at IMG Academy in Florida.

As a freshman, he saw only 20 minutes of action in eight games and only scored 4 points for an average of 0.5 points a game.  Lack of playing time fueled rumors that he would transfer from Kentucky at the end of his freshman season.

On April 5, 2006, Williams surrendered his basketball scholarship to Kentucky and announced that he will transfer.  Kentucky released him without restrictions.  “Adam is a great young man who has done everything we’ve asked of him,” Smith said in a release. “At this point he feels it would be best for him to move on, and we wish him nothing but the best. Adam comes from a great family, and that shows in the way he handles himself on and off the court. I know that Adam will be successful wherever he decides to finish his basketball career.”

On April 10, 2006, Willliams announced that he would transfer to Marshall, where his father, Tex Williams, played basketball and is a member of the athletic hall of fame.

Williams earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Marshall in 2009. He is married to the former Megan Wojcik, also a West Virginia native. The couple has two children: Nixon, and Georgina.