With commitment coming next week, Miami-TAMU will be important to five-star Hykeem Williams
Hykeem Williams’ commitment date is less than a week away and he still hasn’t quite made up his mind about where he’ll be playing college football.
One final trip to Texas, he admitted Wednesday, could play a role.
“I’ve visited enough, I’ve seen enough — well, not yet,” the five-star wide receiver said after finishing up practice at Stranahan High School in Fort Lauderdale. “This weekend should be good.”
On Thursday, Williams will make his college choice in a ceremony at Stranahan, but first is a trip to College Station on Saturday to watch the Texas A&M Aggies host the Miami Hurricanes.
It’s an important trip for a few reasons. Both Miami and Texas A&M are in his top six — along with the Florida State Seminoles, Pittsburgh Panthers, Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama Crimson Tide — and he has never been to a game Kyle Field or watched coach Mario Cristobal’s Hurricanes live in action at all.
For both, it will be a chance for a final impression and a first, and more than half of his final six is getting a shot to make one in the final few weeks before he makes an oral commitment.
Last weekend, Williams trekked up Pittsburgh to watch the Panthers lose a top-25 showdown with the Tennessee Volunteers. The weekend before, he traveled to New Orleans to watch Florida State beat the LSU Tigers in the Caesars Superdome. This weekend, he will get a chance to see two more and then he will come back home to Florida, sit down with his family and make a decision.
Williams’ thoughts on top six
Although Texas A&M is the favorite in 247Sports’ Crystal Ball, there’s no clear indication of which way Williams is leaning, and the 6-foot-3, 200-pound wideout has cites different reasons why he likes just about every team on his list.
For the Aggies, he loves unique college-town feel and Texas A&M coach Jimbo Fisher’s “great resume with receivers my size.”
At Pittsburgh, “It’s just so crazy how you get so much love there,” he said. “I haven’t committed there, I haven’t did anything there yet, and I just get so much love.”
The Seminoles made an impression with their win in Louisiana and the way “their culture just filled the dome,” he said. “It was overpowering from in and out.”
What about Georgia and Alabama? For those, the appeal is obvious.
“Those are two of the top schools in college football,” Williams said. “You can’t put it no other way.”
What Williams says about Miami
Although it’s the hometown team, Miami is still something of an unknown to the No. 1 recruit in South Florida — according to the 247 composite rankings — because of its coaching change last year. Everyone else in Williams’ top six has coaches with multiple years of experience at their current school, yet he hasn’t been to Coral Gables yet for a Cristobal-led practice.
As excited as he is to watch an Aggies home game, Williams is even more interested to see what the Hurricanes look like.
“Them, especially,” he said, “just because everyone knows how they rebuilt coaches, how everything’s changed. Just seeing them in action’s going to be good.”
Cristobal, rather than offensive coordinator Josh Gattis, is heading up this recruitment himself, and Williams said his involvement stands out.
“Of course! He makes the most money there. He runs everything. Whatever he says goes,” Williams said. “He’s just full of energy. ... He’s always got a smile on his face and his passion for football — I can tell he loves football.”
Williams is also very close with wide receiver Xavier Restrepo and star safety James Williams, and has spoken with wide receiver Key’Shawn Smith and quarterback Jake Garcia in the past, too.
If the Hurricanes can swoop in late to keep Williams home, those connections could go a long way. The hometown appeal doesn’t work as a selling point for every recruit, but Williams said he thinks about it, especially when he sees players with similar backgrounds succeed at Miami.
“Just to have that feeling to be able to go back to your hometown and make it great again — it’s just a great feeling,” Williams said. “I know a lot of players on the team, so just seeing how the coaches rebuilt the staff, rebuilt the team and how they’re producing the players that I know.”
There’s an important caveat with this whole decision plan, though: Williams still has a Florida State official visit scheduled for November and wants to take one to Texas A&M before he signs his national letter of intent in December. It’ll also be relatively easy for the Hurricanes to get him down Miami Gardens for a game at Hard Rock Stadium, especially if they keep winning.
Either way, Thursday is an important date in the recruitment of the elite receiver — even if it’s not the only important one — and this week is even more important for the Hurricanes to prove the Cristobal era is on the right track.
This story was originally published September 16, 2022 at 9:59 AM.
