Conversation with Boom Williams

[LarryVaught1]

LEXINGTON — Before Kentucky played Ohio on Saturday, Stanley Williams Sr. predicted that his son was ready to put his mark on the UK offense.

He did just that, too, with a 53-yard scoring run in the first quarter in Kentucky’s 20-3 victory.

“My dad is very predicatable sometimes and he knows when something good is about to happen,” said the UK freshman from Georgia. “I don’t know how, but he does. It’s like he said when he said something good would happen today and it did. Everybody played well and it was a really good win for the team.”

Of course, his father also said that Williams, nicknamed Boom, got his speed from him.

“My dad is a good guy. Me and him joke around about that stuff all the time,” Williams said. “My dad was a good player and he has taught me a lot of things. I think I learned some things from him, but I don’t think my speed was one of them.”

He didn’t get to show his speed in the opening win over UT-Martin when Nebraska transfer Braylon Heard scored on runs of 73 and 43 yards and fellow freshman Mikel Horton ran for two touchdowns. Sphomore Jojo Kemp also scored another touchdown as Heard, Horton and Kemp combined for 192 yards and five scores in the opening win Williams had 10 yards on four tries.

"Our running back corps is probably the best running back corps that Kentucky has had. We've got a lot of great running backs. I was real happy for those guys,” Williams said.

But he also told Heard, who missed the Ohio game with an ankle injury, before Saturday’s game that he was going to help continue what the Cats started in the first game. Once hit hit the line and found a seam, no one was going to catch him and that gave the Commonwealth Stadium crowd its first chance to shout “Boom” for his play.

"I heard it a little bit," Williams said. "You can't get too focused on that. You're focused on the game, obviously. A lot of my teammates came up to me after the game and said, 'Did you hear your name and the whole stadium going Boom?' But I can’t get caught up in that.”

Offensive coordinator Neal Brown has said Williams, who had 60 yards on seven carries Saturday, has to earn his nickname at UK and has consistently referred to him as Stanley. That didn’t change after Saturday’s game.

“Everybody calls me Boom. Then when he (Brown) just comes out of nowhere and calls me Stanley, everybody's like, 'What's going on?' But I'm willing to earn that name here, and I'm building up toward that name,” Williams, a four-star recruit who chose to wear No. 18 like Jacob Tamme and Randall Cobb did at UK, said.

He certainly has enough family members from Georgia come to games to support him. His father, mother and others make about the six-hour drive to UK to see him and plan to be at other road games.

“That is a big part of my family and how supportive of what I do they obviously are. With me being the first person in the family to make it this far (to college), they are real happy,” Williams said. “They try to support me in everything they do and that really just helps me a lot and gives me the right mindset seeing all my family is here supporting me. So I was really glad I could make that big play for them.”

[CatQuick]

He's the real deal as a playmaker and we need some schemes where we can get him the ball in space.