Alondes Williams Wins ACC Player of the Year

Wake Forest senior guard Alondes Williams has won the ACC Player of the Year, becoming the first Demon Deacon to win the award since Josh Howard in 2003. He beat North Carolina’s Armando Bacot by 10 votes to win the award.

Williams was absolutely phenomenal for the Deacs this season. The Oklahoma transfer finished the season averaging 19.3 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 5.3 assists per game while shooting an impressive 52% from the field. In his lone season as a Wake Forest Demon Deacon, Williams scored in double figures in 30 of 31 games, including 14 games with 20 or more points and 3 games of 30 or more points. Scoring was just part of the story, however, as Williams also finished with 5 or more rebounds in 23 games and 5 or more assists in 12 games.

In a game against USC Upstate in December, Williams finished with 16 points, 14 rebounds, and 10 assists to get Wake’s first triple-double since Tim Duncan did it back in 1996. Triple doubles are pretty common in the NBA today, but in college, they are still incredibly rare. In the roughly 5,340 D-I games this season, only 25 saw a player finish with a triple double. On top of that, Williams was just 1 of 5 major conference players to achieve the feat this season.

Williams’ ability to stuff the stat sheet was large reason for Wake Forest’s resurgence from the bottom of the ACC back to basketball relevancy. On the back of his strong play this season, Wake Forest completed the best ACC turnaround season in conference history, winning 10 more conference games than they did a season ago. Williams also helped Wake win 23 games for the first time since 2009 and 13 conference games for the first time since 2005. In a single season, Alondes Williams was able to pull Wake Forest out of the rebuilding process and make them contenders in the ACC once again.

Despite being passed by Buddy Boeheim in scoring (by 1 point) in the final day of ACC play, Williams led the conference for most of the season in both scoring and assists and can still become the first player to ever lead the conference in both categories (stats continue through post-season play). Even if he doesn’t, that does not take away from what a special season Alondes Williams had for Wake Forest this season. He absolutely deserves to be Player of the Year and will always be a major part of the team that brought the Demon Deacons back from the dead.

Congratulation Alondes and Go Deacs!