{"id":89327,"date":"2025-08-17T10:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T10:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89327\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T10:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T10:46:09","slug":"kam-williams-is-shining-defensively-this-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/89327\/","title":{"rendered":"Kam Williams is shining defensively this summer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Kentucky Wildcats came out of the gates hot last season, kicking off the Mark Pope era with a Sweet 16 appearance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">As year two approaches, there is a brand-new roster in Lexington with quite a few transfer players and even some homegrown commits.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">One name that has impressed this summer is Tulane transfer Kam Williams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Williams is known as a solid 3-and-D guy after shooting an impressive 48.5 percent from the field and 41.2 percent from the three point line last season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Williams fits the Pope offense perfectly, but Pope also wanted to make sure he brought in some guys that can help defensively as well, and that is exactly what he got with the former Green Wave wing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">\u201cKam Williams came in here as an elite, elite-level shooter. By the end of the summer, we\u2019re like, is he gonna be top defender, our second or third-best defender?\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Rm6nmT_mCqA?si=MIUCsy9AFxZuhyll\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pope said on the Eye on College Basketball Podcast<\/a>. \u201cHe led us in DIM, which is a defensive impact metric for us. He was tied for first in blocked shots. He was fourth in rebounding. He\u2019s got a chance. We\u2019re really excited about him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It is easy to just look at points and rebounds on the stat sheet, but Williams also averaged 1.4 steals and 1.1 blocks per game last season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">All in all, Pope got exactly what he needed with Williams and found a two-for-one guy with shooting and defensive capabilities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">It will be fun to see him in action this upcoming season!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kentucky Wildcats came out of the gates hot last season, kicking off the Mark Pope era with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,569,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-89327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-kentucky","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaabasketball","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}