Terrific Trojan: All-First Coast guard Caleb Williams led Ribault resurgence in basketball
Year after year, growing up on Jacksonville's Northside, Caleb Williams took in the lessons of the legacy.
Someday, he knew he would pull on the Columbia blue jerseys of Ribault basketball. When that someday arrived, he had to be ready to carry on the Trojan tradition.
"It was heavy," he said. "It was a lot of heavy weight, knowing that I was expected to be one of the players to bring us back to that Ribault tradition and have a great legacy here."
A final-four leader of a Ribault resurgence in the final year in the school's current building, the junior point guard is the Times-Union's All-First Coast player of the year in boys basketball.
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He's only the fourth different player from a Duval County public school to win the award in the 21st century, following Jackson's Danny Bell (2002-03), Raines' Derwin Kitchen (2003-04 and 2004-05) and Paxon's Isaiah Adams (2018-19 and 2019-20).
A drought is ending, too. Williams becomes Ribault's first All-First Coast player of the year in boys basketball since 1993-94, when Torrance Archie led the Trojans to the Class 3A state championship on his way to a college career at Virginia Commonwealth.
Williams averaged 13.9 points, 3.5 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 3.7 steals while leading the Trojans to the Florida High School Athletic Association final four for the first time since 2017.
His award-winning campaign closed the book on a grand hoops tradition on the school's current campus. The 66-year-old high school is due for a near-total demolition and reconstruction over the next two years, which will temporarily relocate the Trojans one block northward to the Ribault Middle School building.
Add one more regional championship banner, and one more county tournament trophy, to the new home.
"We put a lot of hard work and determination into this season," Williams said, "and we knew this was the season to be great."
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GROWING UP IN THE GAME
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Williams was 5 years old when he started shooting hoops, learning in the Blacktop recreational league at Potter's House on Jacksonville's Westside.
From the start, his eyes were already on the pro game. His older cousin, T.J. Bannister, who himself won All-First Coast honors at Arlington Country Day in 2001, subsequently embarked on a decade-long professional career that included stints in Europe and Asia. Back home, Williams would follow those exploits from across the Atlantic, a crash course in basketball-style geography.
"He just was pushing me to work hard, and I just started falling in love with the game. … I would just watch when he was playing overseas on the network, seeing what he does best," Williams said.
When Williams started out, he looked to Rajon Rondo as the NBA model for his pass-heavy point guard game. These days, he said, he shapes his game more along the lines of the Phoenix Suns' Chris Paul or the Portland Trail Blazers' Damian Lillard: combination passer and scorer.
"He had no problem with the three, but the mid-range shooting is probably what's made him one of the dominant point guards," said Ribault coach Charles Showers, who is also Williams' stepfather. "With his height, he can get in there, pull up and shoot before the defenders could get to him."
As Williams' skills grew, he regularly played up in age group to take on the challenge from older opponents. That pitted a still-small elementary school student up against middle schoolers two or more years older, even future stars like current University of Florida forward Alex Fudge.
And, over time, Williams learned more about some of the basketball lessons that Showers passed along from his basketball mentor, the late Ribault coaching legend and four-time state champion Bernard Wilkes.
"I learned to be more determined, more hungry than everybody else," Williams said. "I was smaller than everybody, so I had to just play hard and be a dog on the court."
MASTER OF DEFENSE
The word at Ribault: defense. It was the foundation in Bernard Wilkes' day. It's still the motto now.
"If you can't play defense," Williams said, "you can't play at Ribault."
The moment when that his defensive efforts really began to bear fruit, he said, came during the 2021-22 regional first round. Ribault entered as the No. 8 seed at Orange Park's Raider Dome against future Jacksonville University guard Josiah Sabino, but Williams' effort helped contain the Raider offense in a 65-59 Trojan upset.
"I knew we had to lock him down so we could win the game," Williams said. "That was when everything [on defense] really clicked."
After their 2021-22 season, Williams and his Trojans teammates knew the time had come to turn up the defensive intensity — not necessarily the fabled press of the Wilkes-era and the "Running Gunning Trojans," but a stifling man-to-man defense that gave opponents fits.
It paid off on the scoreboard: After allowing 59.2 points per game in his sophomore season, the Trojans held opponents to an average of 48.7 this year.
"He took pride in that [defense]," Showers said. "It was a big thing to show people that he could really play defense, and when he did that, the whole team came along. That's what really got us over that hump in the playoffs."
TROJAN TURNAROUND
The message to Jacksonville: Once more, Trojan tradition is alive and well.
Before Williams arrived, Ribault had slumped from the top tier of Duval County programs since its 2017 final four appearance, going 9-16, 7-18 and 10-12 in the next three years. In his sophomore year, he helped pull the Trojans into the playoffs at 16-10.
Still, even Showers said he wasn't sure a year ago whether this year's Trojans were ready to take the next step to the RP Funding Center in Lakeland. As the season approached, though, he recognized that happy days were returning to Winton Drive.
"As he got better, as the team around him got better, we both determined, 'You could be the one to lead us back to the final four,'" Showers recalled.
Yes, they were ready.
Ribault raced through the season at 25-5, transforming into a regional tournament steamroller — 95-61 over Tallahassee Godby, 69-50 over Panama City Bay and 91-59 over Bishop Kenny at a packed Austin-Wilkes Gymnasium for the school's home hoops finale. Only the might of The Villages Charter's 6-8 power forward Sam Walters, an Alabama signee and runner-up for the Florida Dairy Farmers Mr. Basketball award, denied Ribault a shot at a fifth title, 43-39 in a nail-biting Class 4A semifinal.
Williams nailed 81 percent of his free throws and shot 41 percent from beyond the 3-point arc. But his influence on the Trojans went beyond the stat sheet.
On an undersized Trojans lineup by 2023 standards — 6-5 Kalvin Gilbert at forward, along with 6-1 Kevin Stokes, 6-1 George Woods, 5-11 Jeremiah White — the drive and energy of the 6-foot Williams symbolized the spirit of the never-say-die Trojans.
Off the court, he's also performing in the classroom, a member of the National Honor Society and the National Beta Club with a 3.9 grade-point average. While he's still evaluating college options, he's interested in pursuing a major in finance as he plays basketball at the next level.
But Williams still has unfinished business in Jacksonville. One more year at Ribault means one more chance to open the next chapter of basketball tradition, this time at the old school's new home. The game plan is clear.
"Be a leader, and put everything you have into Ribault," he said, "and they're going to show you love back."
Caleb Williams
Junior, Ribault
Age: 17
Resume: Led Trojans to Region 1-4A championship and Class 4A final four. … Also won Gateway Conference championship during a 25-5 season. … Averaged 13.9 points, 3.5 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 3.7 steals. … Three-time All-Gateway Conference honoree.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: High school boys basketball 2023: All-First Coast, Caleb Williams
