LAS VEGAS — Dontrez Williams had given Lindenwood a two-point lead with 1:24 left, turning a steal into a fast-break layup in the Ohio Valley Conference tournament. The Lions still lost. Southeast Missouri State scored the final four points, and Williams’ last college season ended on a jumper with three seconds remaining.
Williams finished with 75 steals, a Lindenwood Division I-era record. That March 5 loss showed both his ability to change a game and the limits of asking one disruptive defender to carry a team.
Williams arrives after averaging 15.2 points, 5.1 rebounds and 2.6 steals at Lindenwood. At 6-foot-5, he gives Josh Pastner a wing with a record of taking the ball away and contributing on the glass. Those are jobs the Rebels need done. His shooting and turnovers leave the staff another set of problems to manage while trying to keep that defensive production on the floor.
I like the addition of Dontrez Williams for UNLV.
— JPR (@Scouting_Col) May 4, 2026
Averaged 15.2 ppg. 28% from 3pt and 61% at the rim.
Has physical tools.
Cam Miles, Tyler Harris, MJ Thomas, and Williams all feel like boom or bust guys.
I like this addition most if UNLV resists asking him to carry the same scoring workload he handled last season. There is value in a player who can help win the ball, run and finish a possession without having to create a difficult shot every other trip. Pastner has to build a lineup that lets Williams do that while keeping the lane open enough for everybody else.
His final game also showed why describing him only as a gambler would be unfair. Williams had seven rebounds in the first half, when Lindenwood built a nine-point lead. Anias Futrell supplied 15 first-half points. Williams was helping secure possessions while another Lion carried the scoring, long before the steal and layup briefly put Lindenwood ahead at the end.
Williams finished the season with 114 defensive rebounds. Jadis Jones and Milos Nenadic had major rebounding responsibilities at Lindenwood, yet the wing still had work to complete behind the first contest. That is the contribution UNLV should expect to travel alongside his aggression: being available for the miss when a teammate, rather than Williams, forces the difficult shot.
1H | Dontrez Williams drives his way to the basket 🚙 @ACU_MBB
— United Athletic Conference (@UAConference) March 14, 2025
📺 (ESPN+)
#OneWAC x #WAChoops x #WACvegas
The day before, his work had helped another teammate finish a decisive play. In a 72-62 tournament win over Little Rock, Williams blocked a shot near the top of the key, and Clayton Jackson scored the resulting fast-break layup. That sequence came with 5:32 remaining, stretching the Lions’ lead to 53-50 after Little Rock had fought back.
Milos Nenadic scored a career-high 24 points and made 16 free throws that night. Jadis Jones helped start the game and restore the lead when Little Rock moved in front. Williams supplied a defensive play that Jackson could finish while Nenadic carried the scoring.
UNLV should want Williams playing inside that kind of division of responsibility. MJ Thomas can help with the rebounding work. Jeremy Foumena gives the staff another interior player to organize combinations around. If Williams attacks a passing lane, the men behind him still have assignments. The job is to make the opponent’s possession harder, without routinely making a teammate defend two people after a missed reach.
Pastner also needs Williams to contain drives and recover to shooters on possessions that offer no steal. Seventy-five takeaways are useful. Staying home when there is nothing to take matters, too.
Lindenwood’s Jan. 15 win at Southeast Missouri State makes the upside easy to understand. Williams finished with 22 points and seven steals in an 88-76 road victory. Futrell scored 28 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, while Jones added 20 points and 10 rebounds. The three could produce together, and Williams’ defensive activity was part of a game in which several Lions had substantial offensive responsibility.
He also answered a very different demand when Southeast Missouri State began coming back. With only two seconds left on the shot clock, Nenadic found Williams on the right wing. Williams made the 3. He connected from outside again less than a minute later. The same player collecting steals had to accept a late-clock catch and finish a possession that offered very little time to arrange anything else.
UNLV would gladly take those two shots. Over the full season, though, Williams made 27 of 92 threes, or 29.3%. A defense planning to help away from him has more evidence than two makes in January. His task at UNLV will be to make those catches productive often enough that opponents cannot make helping against the other Rebels an easy decision.
There is another caution inside that January win. Lindenwood’s huge second-half lead eventually shrank to seven with 1:10 remaining. The Lions survived, but seven steals from Williams did not prevent the opponent from putting sustained pressure on the team. Turning one defender’s most aggressive contribution into a verdict on an entire defense would misread even one of his best nights.
His year at Lindenwood was a substantial change from his first college season. At Abilene Christian, Williams played in all 32 games, averaged 15.5 minutes and scored 5.8 points per game. He earned WAC All-Freshman Team honors while coming off the bench. At Lindenwood, he started 27 of his 29 appearances and averaged about 32 minutes. Both the opportunity and the burden grew.
Pastner should give Williams specific offensive work to pursue alongside the defense. A possession directed by Terrance Ford Jr. can get Williams a catch after a defender moves. A possession asking Williams to organize everything himself exposes a different part of his game. He finished last season with 60 assists and 78 turnovers. Those totals make restraint in the playmaking assignment reasonable.
Ford has a role in easing that burden, but so does Williams. Once the outlet is available, he does not have to beat every defender himself to produce a successful break. Delivering the ball early can let a teammate finish while the opponent is still running back. Choosing that pass would help preserve the advantage his defensive work created in the first place.
Cam Miles adds another player to the backcourt competition, and Tyler Harris brings a different shooting history at forward. Their presence will affect which shots Williams needs to take. Harris’ Washington season offers a reason to try putting a respected perimeter threat beside him, although Harris’ smaller Vanderbilt season makes that combination a projection to test rather than a solved lineup.
A lineup with Williams and an interior finisher needs the other players to command attention. If Williams’ defender waits near the lane, a drive by another Rebel can meet help before it reaches the basket. Williams can try to punish that help with an open shot or a well-timed cut. He cannot simply stand outside and assume the defense will honor a percentage it has reason to challenge.
Nor does moving him closer to the basket automatically solve the problem. Thomas and Foumena will need their own room to finish and pursue rebounds. A cut has to arrive where there is space, rather than carry another defender into a teammate’s attempt. Pastner’s combinations will determine how often Williams gets to attack an opening and how often he finds a crowd.
The free-throw line is the less glamorous part of the same offensive discussion. Williams attempted 144 free throws at Lindenwood and made 81, or 56.3%. He reached the line often enough for the misses to become a real cost. Improving that finish would allow him to retain more of the value he creates by attacking, without requiring a sudden transformation into a high-volume 3-point shooter.
His earlier season provides no reason to wave away the issue. At Abilene Christian, Williams made eight of 43 threes and 38 of 60 free throws. The increase in outside production at Lindenwood was progress, but the shot remains a question after two college seasons. UNLV should prepare ways for him to contribute while working on it, rather than make all of his minutes depend on a leap that has not happened.
There is a player here who has already made a difficult leap in responsibility. Doubling his minutes meant more possessions to defend, more scoring demands and more opportunities for an opponent to find a weakness. Williams helped Lindenwood reach 18 wins, its most in the Division I era. His season deserves to be understood through that larger assignment, even while the limitations remain plainly on the page.
Pastner has called this a “full program rebuild.” A player who can rebound from the wing and create chances to run belongs in that work. The coach’s responsibility is to make those skills function with Thomas, Ford and the other additions, and to establish what Williams must do when the steal is unavailable. A roster cannot live on the possession everyone remembers.
UNLV needs Williams’ aggression, with teammates positioned to cover behind him. His steals will matter more if the Rebels also contain the next drive and collect the miss.
