Darrell Williams Charged With Rape

Well among the things I thought I’d be heavily Googling today (AOL, Huffington Post, Aaron Rodger’s Belt), “Darrell Williams Rape” was not in the mix.

Unfortunately it is now.

OKblitz.com is reporting that the Junior “has been charged with three counts of rape by instrumentation and one count of sexual battery.” (okblitz.com)

This stems from an investigation that began in December and has lingered like a black cloud over the team for the entire Big 12 portion of their schedule. If proven it also carries a 1-15 year prison sentence.

Obviously Williams will be suspended immediately and, pending what Ford finds out, eventually kicked off the team.

Torre Johnson anyone?

One of my favorite sayings I’ve come across in reading articles and trolling the message boards is something a guy on orangepower.com posted after Blackmon got arrested for his DUI: “why can’t we have nice things?”

It’s true, Williams was coming into his own averaging a sturdy 11-5 spot in his last five Big 12 games. Alas, we probably won’t ever see him in an OSU uniform again.

In the short term I suspect his starting spot will be re-taken by Matt Pilgrim who has actually looked legitimately interested in playing basketball the last few games. And when he is, he can be an absolute force.

This bigger story is that this incident is representative of a larger concern: what is Travis Ford’s vision for his program? You get the feeling that he’s never really had complete control over his players, the arena, and the leadership of this school as a whole since he’s been there. I’m a massive Ford proponent but maybe he needs to spend a week or two with Gundy to learn how to build a program the right way.