Today marks another entry in our ongoing Illinois on SI “Best of the Century” series featuring the top 10 Illini players over the past 25 years. In our selection process, we considered individual production, career length (must have played at least two seasons since 2000), team accomplishments and intangibles.
Career averages: 14.3 points, 4.0 rebounds, 4.3 assists
Best season averages (2015-16): 16.2 points, 4.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists
Illinois basketball was in transition in the early 2000s, turning the page from coach Lon Kruger’s fringe Big Ten contenders and top-25 clubs to Bill Self’s NCAA Tournament contenders – and Frank Williams was the connective tissue that gave the program the muscle to step up to a new level.
Kruger had tapped into a rich vein of Peoria talent, first luring Sergio McClain and Marcus Griffin to Champaign and, soon after, Williams. Griffin and Williams had both been High School All-Americans, but Williams’ recruitment generated a bit more heat – and his signing with the Illini helped prove Griffin wasn’t a fluke and that his class didn’t have to be only a flash in the pan in Champaign.
Williams wound up making 29 starts and playing in all of Illinois’ 32 games in the 1999-2000 season, back when freshman point guards were more the exception than the rule in college basketball lineups. He averaged 11.4 points, 3.4 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 2.3 steals as a freshman and, following a decade of irrelevance since the 1988-89 Flyin’ Illini, began to push Illinois back onto the national scene.
Casting aside Williams’ freshman year – which technically falls outside our criteria for this series – even the combination of his sophomore and junior seasons, as well as his program legacy, give his Illinois career the heft to earn a place on this list.
In 2000-01, Williams won the Big Ten Player of the Year award and led the Illini – in Self’s first season in Champaign – to an Elite Eight appearance and a No. 4 final ranking. As a junior a year later, he averaged 16.2 points, 4.7 rebounds, 4.4 assists and 2.0 steals and helped send Illinois back to the Sweet 16.
A lead guard with solid size (6-foot-3, 212 pounds), Williams was athletic, physical and tough, at his best working around the rim on offense and blanketing opponents on defense. His only weakness was his jumper. After foregoing his senior season, Williams was the 25th overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft – entering the league at a time when perimeter shooting was becoming a prized commodity. He played parts of three seasons in the league, for the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls.
Oh, and Williams had one final – and significant – contribution left to give Illinois hoops: his son, Da’Monte Williams, a defensive demon and rebounding force on Brad Underwood’s first Illini teams. Da’Monte, like his old man, instilled grit and toughness in those Illinois squads while helping elevate the program from a 14-win campaign his freshman season to a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed and a Big Ten championship in his last two seasons.
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