By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Ramsey Williams is the best ballhandler
Eddie Maruyama has ever coached.
The teams who face the 5-foot-11, 145-pound point guard for defending state champion Moanalua High know that. So does Williams' coach, Eddie Maruyama.
"We actually have to tell him to stop playing basketball at the end of the day," Maruyama said.
"We have to put restrictions on him, otherwise, after practice, he'll go to another gym."
At home, Williams' mother gets irritated when he dribbles through the kitchen to the bedroom.
During the summer, he wakes up at 8 a.m. and shoots around on an outdoor court before the doors of the Salt Lake Recreation Center open at 1 p.m. Once he gets inside, he plays until 6 p.m.
Ten hours of basketball!
But it's a problem Maruyama can live with, because Williams is the best ballhandler he has ever coached. A ballhandler who, as a sophomore in 1996, deftly guided the unseeded Menehunes to the school's first state championship.
Williams, playing in the shadow of his older brother, Charles, and all-star post man Issac Castro, turned it up and slowed it down. He feinted, maneuvered and dished off with such poise and finesse that fans who'd never seen him before were stunned.
"He didn't allow teams to pressure us," Maruyama said.
And that was the difference for Moanalua, no matter what the big guns did.
"They didn't have many turnovers with him in there," said Larry Manliguis, head coach of the No. 2-seeded Hilo Vikings, 59-51 victims to Moanalua in the quarterfinals.
"He could control the ball and always see the open man. He had a lot of patience and made the right decisions."
One fan at the Blaisdell wondered aloud, "Where'd this kid come from?"
The answer is quite simple.
Williams came from the Salt Lake district, where the basketball became an outgrowth of Williams' hand in the seventh grade.
He had played Pop Warner football between the fourth and sixth grades but found himself irresistibly drawn to the joys of passing and scoring when a close friend convinced him to try roundball.
It's not like basketball had been an unfamiliar recreation to Williams, whose father, Charles, played behind the University of Hawaii's legendary Fab Five team.
But he suddenly discovered how strong an affinity he had for it.
The "ping" of the dribble, the squeak of sneakers against the hardwood, and the incomparably sweet sound of "swish," infected his metabolism. He became, and remains, incurable.
While all alone in the parking lot at his home, Williams would mimic drills he picked up by watching the NBA on TV. "I liked the way Magic Johnson passed the ball and I tried his passes against a wall," he said.
"I've never seen anyone play as much as he does," Maruyama said.
Not a man who's ever been given to overstatement, Maruyama nonetheless finds it easy to tick off the many things he likes about Williams:
"He has good skills, he knows the game, he can go left or right, he has good footwork, terrific hands, he can pass when they double up on him, and he's a slashing penetrator."
Two qualities Maruyama thinks Williams will further develop before he leaves the team next year are speed and strength.
"My dad says I've got to become an all-around player," said Williams. "I've got to pass and rebound."
And now he has to score, too.
Castro and brother, Charles, have graduated, and Williams has stepped up to contribute more than 18 points a game.
He has had as many as 27 during the division schedule.
In a preseason morale-builder for Moanalua, Williams had 23 points in a victory over defending OIA champion Kalaheo.
"I usually have to pull up because teams play way off me now to take away my drive," Williams said. "I'm hitting from 3-point range, too."
His job is further complicated these days by defenders trying to deny him the ball.
But because Williams rarely takes a breath without a basketball in his hands, he attacks such problems like a Nintendo addict.
"It's fun to find out how good I am," he said. "That's the way I felt last year in the state tournament. I guess I just love pressure."