Point guard Justice Williams returning to LSU to play for Matt McMahon

LSU point guard Justice Williams is returning to play for Matt McMahon, the school announced in a release on Wednesday evening. Williams averaged 1.7 points, 0.8 rebounds and 0.7 assists in 10.6 minutes per game in 20 contests.

Williams joins Mwani Wilkinson as current LSU players who have committed to playing for McMahon in Baton Rouge next season. The rest of the roster either is headed to play professionally or remains in the NCAA Transfer Portal.

LSU added four transfers in Northwestern State big man Kendal Coleman and NC State guard Cam Hayes along with Murray State backcourt teammates Justice Hill and Trae Hannibal. LSU also brought in former Murray State signee Corneilous Williams, a big man out of North Carolina, who the school announced as an official signee on Wednesday.

Could Justice Williams play point guard?

During his freshman season, LSU had moments where former head coach Will Wade could’ve played Williams more at point guard. Instead, he was firm with him as a combo guard as players like Xavier Pinson and Adam Miller were out with injuries.

“Justice is more of a combo guard than a true point,” Wade said Feb. 7. “If we played him at full-time point guard right now, it wouldn’t be good for anybody, including him. He’s getting better, he’s playing well. He’s done some really, really good things for us. But, I mean, he should be playing high school basketball right now, and we’ve got him playing in the best conference in the country. So I think he’s done a very admirable job. I think he’s done a very, very good job.

“But you’ve got to understand, too, he also got here in August. He didn’t go through the summer with us, he didn’t go through strength and conditioning with us. There’s a lot of stuff he just didn’t go through. So asking him to play full-time point guard for us right now would not be doing the right thing by him or our team.”

It’ll be up to McMahon to see how Williams can help the Tigers in the future as he takes over a program that still has some rebuilding to do this offseason. With Williams back in the mix, LSU has seven of 13 scholarships accounted for.

Justice Williams was ranked as the No. 8 combo guard in the Class of 2022, per the On3 100 rankings. He reclassified to the 2021 class just in time to join LSU for the 2021-22 season.