2020 guard Williams discusses his decommitment from Nebraska
On the day that Nebraska’s football team was celebrating its new batch of 2020 signees, Fred Hoiberg and Husker basketball saw one of their longtime commitments reopen his recruitment.
2020 Lincoln (Neb.) North Star guard Donovan Williams, who verbally committed to NU under Tim Miles and the previous coaching staff, announced on Wednesday evening that he was decommitting and would explore other options.
“I don’t want to sit here and throw the coaching staff under the bus, but it came to the point where I wasn’t a priority,” Williams told HuskerOnline. “I wasn’t getting the same love as I got with Coach Miles, and I just felt like I wasn’t wanted.”
The four-star Rivals150 prospect said the tipping point in his decision came when Nebraska landed a commitment from 2020 Western Nebraska C.C. guard Teddy Allen on Tuesday.
“That definitely, definitely, definitely played a part in it,” Williams said.
Williams spoke with Hoiberg on Wednesday and informed him he was backing out of his commitment. He said, “it probably wasn’t the news (Hoiberg) wanted to hear,” but the coach wished him the best and offered whatever help he could provide going forward.
Williams said another aspect of his decision was seeing how NU was assembling its roster with so many older transfers, both from DI and junior college ranks. Williams said he didn’t disagree with the strategy but felt like it wasn’t conducive to his goal of being an immediate impact player next season.
“It’s the right place for me, but just not the right time, which hurts me really bad,” Williams said. “I wanted to play for my home state, but it’s just not meant to be.”
Williams said he was completely wide open in his recruitment right now but noted that he’d been in contact with a couple of schools that were expressing interest in his services.
For now, Williams said he was going to focus solely on continuing to recover from his ACL surgery and hoped to return to the court for North Star this season.
Williams said he could either commit to a new school in the spring or play another season of AAU basketball this summer to potentially get a few more looks. He said he was not interested in playing at a post-graduate school.