Being (the other) Caleb Williams

“I mean, that’s the real Caleb Williams right there.”

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By then, the whole crowd had fallen in love with the kid from Wild Rose, Wis., a town of fewer than 800 people. Caleb Williams — this one, not the other one — does more than share a name with USC’s outgoing quarterback, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner and potential No. 1 pick in the next NFL draft. He’s a double major in math and physics, a 3.9-GPA student at high-academic Macalester, who might plot a career studying nuclear magnetic resonance. He says things such as: “Isn’t it cool that all physical behavior can be described by math?”

And he was born to score a basketball.

In the Minnesota scrimmage, he canned long threes, hit leaners off one foot, floated in and out of the lane as if he were the only player on the court. A 22-year-old senior, he averaged 21.5 points per game last season, making him one of the best scorers in Division III. With an extra year of eligibility, he could transfer to a D-I program next year if the interest continues. Or the 6-foot-2 guard could stay at Macalester, which will visit Saint John’s University (of Collegeville, Minn.) on Saturday before a new Heisman winner is crowned in New York.

Wherever he winds up, he will stay on his quest to master the art and selection of off-balance shots. But balance, to Williams, has always been relative. And after Caleb Williams — that one, not this one — took the Heisman a year ago, (basketball) Caleb learned that fame is relative, too.

“I’m not sure as many people would have noticed what I did against Minnesota if we didn’t have the same name,” Williams said, forgetting to mention that Shaquille O’Neal reached out after seeing the highlights. “When I was younger, I’d try to search for my AAU highlights and the whole first page of results would be someone else. Every time, I wondered who this other Caleb Williams was, apparently crushing it in football.”

There’s also one other bug when Williams Googles himself.

“We have the exact same birthday,” he said. “So one time I type myself in and I see ‘Nov. 18, 2001.’ I think: ‘No way, I’m finally the top result?’ But nope. He was just born that day, too.”

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Maybe 15 years ago, Bruce and his father, Bob, poured a small block of concrete for Williams to use as his court. Basketball is their family tradition. Bob grew up on a dairy farm in Wild Rose, shooting hoops on a crooked rim in the barn, then watched his sons, nieces and nephews do the same. He was one of the first 1,000-point scorers in the history of Wild Rose High, later joined on the list by Williams and Williams’s uncle Brett. Bruce finished at 997 for his career, though he still brags to Williams that he holds Wild Rose’s single-game scoring record at 47.

When Bruce coached Wild Rose’s girls’ varsity team, Bob was one of his assistants. When Bruce became an assistant for the boys’ team, Bob, a longtime referee in Wild Rose, operated the scoreboard. Bruce is now an assistant for the women’s team at Cornell College in Iowa. Bob, now 80, has maybe watched more Wild Rose basketball than anyone alive.

“My dad didn’t do anything with sports. He was too busy working the farm all day,” Bob said. “But my mom was a huge basketball fan. That’s where it started, a very, very long time ago.”

This is all why Abe Woldeslassie, Macalester’s head coach, had to make a few stops when he visited town to recruit Williams. Conner Nord, his lead assistant, had seen some tape and put Williams near the top of Macalester’s targets list. Williams was a state champion in the triple jump. No matter the size of Williams’s school, Woldeslassie and Nord felt his athleticism and creativity could transform their program.

But because of incompatible schedules, Woldeslassie never saw Williams play in person. Instead, he spent a morning touring Williams’s high school, where his mother taught at the time, before classes began. Then Woldeslassie went to sit with Bob.

“Because he ran all the school buses, I had to wait a bit before driving over,” Woldeslassie recalled. “We hung out in his kitchen and drank coffee, talked about Caleb, about basketball and the history of the place. I will say this: ‘Not many recruiting trips end up in the grandpa’s kitchen.’”

“That’s my dad for you,” Bruce said. “Abe couldn’t have left town without meeting him.”

“I didn’t know that happened until later,” Caleb said. “I remember being like: ‘The coach ended up where? Now how on earth did that happen?’”

Twenty-two years ago, a baby boy on the way, Bruce and Stephanie Williams threw around names. They both went to University of Wisconsin Green Bay, where Bruce worked with the men’s basketball staff. Then, the team had a player named Caleb. Bruce always liked the sound of it. Eventually, Stephanie did, too.

But Bruce had another pitch, just in case their son became a basketball star. If they named him Cooper, any boos would sound like the opposing crowd was pulling for him instead. Cooper never had much of a chance. And as it turned out, on maybe the biggest night of his basketball career, in the game he dropped 41 on a Division I team, the Minnesota fans started cheering after each of his second-half buckets. When he subbed out in the final minutes, they gave him a standing ovation. Behind the Gophers’ bench, Bruce and Stephanie stood with them, not a single boo in the building.

Caleb Williams was the hero, on top of the whole world.