Lucas was voted to the Freshmen MVC First Team, along with Cameron Krutwig last year.

Among the reasons why, was that Lucas among the MVC regulars who played at least 1/2 their team's minutes, he was first in the MVC in steals/turnover ratio, a positive 1.03.

In 3 point percentage, among the MVC regulars he finished 8th with a 41.5% average which placed him 1st among the freshmen MVC regulars.

Talent on offense & talent on defense.

The best thing about him is he is only a freshman. If he works hard in the off season, he can become on of the better players in the MVC.

I definitely think he's one of the most under rated players on the team. If he can get better each year.... he's going to be a great player!

Williamson is great his defense allowed us to hit the buzzer beater against Miami.

What's great about Lucas is he's already proven to be more than above average as a 3 and D player to go along with being a solid passing and rebounding skills. If he can add a dribble drive and a halfway decent mid range game in the next 3 years.... watch out.

Why Williamson starts at shooting guard & Townes starts at small forward:

Townes has 20 more pounds of muscle & pulls down more rebounds per minute (in addition to the fact that Williamson has the fewest turnovers per minute on the team).

That goes doubly for Skokna off the bench, who is 35 pounds lighter than Townes.

It's really tough not to be optimistic about next year, especially with guys like Williamson on the team.

As far as our 3 returning starters - Clayton is gonna be strong next year. He's an unbelievably gifted point guard who plays up to his potential in almost every game and seems to have a knack for knowing when to drive-and-shoot and when to drive-and-kick. It's tough to think that he's going to get any better this season from last, as he had an outstanding season with 20+ and I believe only 3 losses (one to Michigan in the Final Four) last year. Townes really hit his stride towards the end of the season, culminating with the monster performance he had in the Nevada game. I think our final four run should give him more confidence and we should see a much improved decision-maker on the ourt this year. I think with a good off-season, he will no doubt be better an a more prolific scorer than last year. As for Krutwig -- It's hard to believe that we potentially have 3 more years with this guy. I'm hoping we see him come in with even more muscle, but his footwork and ability to back guys bigger than him down low was so impressive last year. That being said -- we saw a lot of games where he came up huge for us (Florida), and some games where he got completely lost and was a non-factor. I'm not necessarily expecting him to be "better" this year, as much as I'm expecting him to be more consistent from game-to-game. If he can do that, he is in for a hell of a year.

Williamson -- I know "officially" we only have 3 starters returning this year, but Williamson, by the end of the season, sure felt like a starter to me, despite not getting the nod at tip-off. Let's hope that he can learn to hit the three from everywhere else around the arc other than just the corners, where it felt like he was 90% from last year. Williamson is the guy I see having the most growth as a player in the offseason, and i think if he gets even better than he was, we have a real chance at having a better regular season than we did last year. He is gifted athletically, has fantastic shot from the corners, can handle the ball and rebound. Obviously we need guys to pick up where Richardson and Jackson left off last year, and Williamson seems like a great player to step his game up and do that.


From there, the big question marks are Negron, Uguak, Agunanne and Skokna. Those are the big unknowns that seem to hinge on whether we are going to take a step forward or a step back this year.

I like Skokna, but I just feel like the best we can expect from him is 10 or 15 solid minutes off the bench, and my hope is that he can just not make mistakes while he's in the game and give our starters some needed rest. I thought he did a decent job of that last year. If we see some improvement, that will be fantastic, but I'm just hoping he stays the course for us.

Negron - It drives me crazy to think of how good this kid would have been without the injuries. I'm hoping this isn't one of these situations where he's just continually plagued. From the very few minutes we were able to see him last year, i was very excited that once he's at 100 percent, he will be a real force for us. Because of the injuries, I am not expecting a whole lot, but i'm HOPING he surprises us and regains his form from high school.

Uguak and Agunanne... I suppose we'll just have to wait and see? These guys seem to be the biggest unknowns going into next year. iF they can play up to their hype, we for sure will be a better team than we were last year. If not, we are going to have trouble keeping other teams out of the paint.

Toledo, you pluralized Negron's injuries. I'm only aware of his high school ACL injury.
Did I miss something?

We all kind of knew Krutwig would be a major factor for us before last season began. But we had no idea how good and important Lucas Williamson would be. Relative to expectations, Williamson was the biggest surprise of any of the newcomers last year. It was like having two experienced Ben Richardsons playing defense for us, because from the get-go, Williamson as a freshman played as well as Richardson as a sophomore.

To me, the question with Williamson is, how much better can his offense be? His defense is already in the top 25 of all players in the MVC in my opinion. His block in the game at UNI last year was one of the best and most athletic Loyola defensive plays of the year. He shot 41.5% from three last year, which is really good-- especially for a freshman. But he took few shots inside the arc (only 42 2-point field goal attempts all year), where he shot 47.6%. He'll be taking more twos next year as he'll get more minutes, and I would like to see him work over the summer on getting more confidence taking layups in traffic and finishing at the basket. He seemed to wear down a little as the year went on, too. He shot 48.8% from the field before February 1, and only 34.1% after, falling to 30.4% in March. In his sophomore season he should be better conditioned.

Didn't he tear his meniscus during his ACL recovery? And he was in a walking boot for awhile during the season as well. Sprained ankle in practice.

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