NEW ORLEANS -- Wendell Moore Jr. has played next to two ACC Defensive Player of the Year winners now, along with an All-ACC Defensive Team standout during his three-year Duke career. He himself has been recognized for his contributions on that end of the court after earning a spot on the league's All-Defensive list this season. The man knows good defense. So take it from him when he says that Blue Devils big man Mark Williams is the goods.
"Mark is the best defensive player I've played with," he said Friday ahead of Saturday's Final Four appearance vs. North Carolina. "It's great because he makes my job easier guarding the perimeter. I know if I get beat off the dribble, he'll be there to have my back."
Williams, who won ACC Defensive Player of the Year honors as a sophomore, is quietly anchoring the Final Four's hottest team and doing so with force. Postseason Mark Williams is not just dominating opponents in the paint; he's stealing souls and affecting games as the underrated MOP of a destructive Duke team entering the weekend as the betting favorite to bring Coach K a sixth national championship.
"[He's] definitely the best defensive player I've played with," said fellow front court mate Paolo Banchero.
Williams is stuffing stat sheets on defense, absolutely. Since the tournament expanded nearly four decades ago, only two players during a single March Madness run have more blocks than him in 150 minutes or fewer of game time, according to College Basketball Reference data (Williams has played 127 minutes). He's tied for the most blocks by a Duke player in an NCAA Tournament run (16) with the great Shane Battier.
But affecting shots is just as important to what makes him such a dangerous presence in the middle of Duke's defense. Yes, the stat sheet looks fabulous, but it tells only a fraction of the story. If striking fear into the hearts of would-be scorers is a stat, Williams would be the nation's runaway leader.
"He gets a lot of credit for the blocks, but I think more the effect that I see is ... just the shots he changes and kind of the fear he puts in the offensive players," said Banchero. "A lot of players are hesitant to go up. They pump fake or kick out when usually they go and try and finish just because Mark's there. So it's a big help, for sure."
Acting as a human detour sign for Duke's back-end defense is second-nature to Williams, who says he watches tape and takes lessons from the games of Hakeem Olajuwon, Rudy Gobert and Bam Adebayo. During this NCAA Tournament run, his improved mobility and added versatility in particular has popped.
"I think just working on lateral movement just helped me [with] overall defending," Williams said. "Sometimes, late in the shot clock you have to switch. Some games we're switching from the beginning. So just staying in front of whoever you're guarding."
Most of the time, Williams' assignment is serving as the safety net around the paint. Duke's defense funnels drivers into the paint, who quickly realize the 7-foot frame and 7-foot-7 wingspan (!) are deterrents to doing anything productive. Some of the time, though, teams put Williams into switches on the perimeter to test his foot speed and the improved lateral quickness. Making him defend in space -- even someone as long and agile as him -- is a tough ask. And yet ...
Williams' efficiency extends to the opposite end of the court, too, where he stands as the only player in college basketball shooting 70% or better from the field and 70% or better from the free throw line. And here's the list of players during a single NCAA Tournament run who have taken at least 20 shot attempts and made them at an 80% clip or better: Jerrell Wright (2013) and Mark Williams (2022).
His shot chart looks like a glitch, mind you -- most of his shots come on put-backs, dunks or dinks around the bucket -- but the efficiency is laughably good. Scoring that effectively and consistently (he's 25 of 31 in four NCAA Tournament games) takes pressure off the offense from firing from distance with high frequency, too. Duke isn't a great 3-point shooting team (its 29.9% ranks 219th nationally), nor does it do so on high volume thanks in part to the mid-range game of Banchero and in the point-blank game of Williams.
This Duke roster has a glut of NBA talents -- as many as five could go in the first round of this year's draft -- but no one on the roster has a higher impact-to-appreciation ratio than Williams. Banchero gets the headlines and Coach K's swan song drowns out a ton of media noise, but The Human Detour Sign demands respect and recognition as the underrated catalyst behind this Duke bunch on the precipice of sending Mike Krzyzewski into retirement with one last championship.
"He's automatic, especially in the paint around the rim," said Banchero of Williams earlier this season. "So you just want to get him the ball there, and he's going to do the rest. He's been doing that all year."
