Williams isn’t just a center on the MSU women’s basketball team. She’s been the center of attention ever since she was a seventh-grader called out of class to receive a recruiting letter from then-Eastern Michigan and current MSU head coach Suzy Merchant.

“I was in math class, and everybody thought I was in trouble,” Williams said. “But I was really just getting college mail, which was funny.”

Standing 6 feet 7 inches tall, Williams wasn’t just expected to be a game changer, but what Merchant called “a program changer,” as the second McDonald’s All-American ever to come to MSU and one of the most anticipated recruits in program history.

Williams has only played in three games after tearing her ACL in each of her knees at the beginning of the past two seasons, and the player who once thought she couldn’t live without basketball is determined to find her way back to the hardwood.

Standing tall
Williams’ eye-catching height started at birth, or as she said, “coming out of the womb, I was the tallest.”

Born 24 inches long and standing 6 feet 4 inches as a freshman in high school, Williams always stood out, despite desperately wanting to blend in.

“There have been many times when she and I have cried about her height,” Williams’ mother, Nanette Casida, said. “I said, ‘It’s the cross you bear, but the blessing you’ve been given.‘”

At Detroit Country Day, Williams averaged a near triple-double as a senior and led her high school to two state championships. Yet despite her success, Country Day head coach Frank Orlando said Williams never considered herself an elite player.

“She never really wanted the limelight, even though she richly deserved it,” Orlando said. “There’s no question when we went into a game, (the opponent’s) whole offense was predicated on the fact that you had to get by Madison Williams, and you couldn’t.”

To help her come out of her shell, Orlando issued a challenge to his star player at practice, and Williams delivered.

“I told the girls if Madison dunks today, there will be no running,” he said. “She got 12 feet above the rim and … suffice to say, there was no running that day.”

However, setting a new standard for women’s basketball wasn’t of interest to Williams.

She told Orlando and Merchant that her life didn’t revolve around basketball, and because of her interests in school, art, faith and family, it wasn’t something she would miss if it were to end.

It wasn’t until she came to MSU and tragedy struck that Williams would learn the true depth of her love for the game.

Falling in love again
Standing on the Breslin Center floor wearing her MSU jersey for the first time and leaping to touch the ball, Williams was hit in the air and fell to the ground.

“It felt like my thigh bone went one way and my lower bones went the other way, and they detached for a second,” she said. “When I looked down, I thought my leg was going to be in half, going the wrong way, but it looked totally fine, so I thought, ‘Oh, I’m OK.’”

That feeling was quickly replaced by excruciating pain as trainers began working on her right knee and discovered she had torn both her medial collateral ligament, or MCL, and ACL in her right leg.

“I was on crutches (with) no weight-bearing in a straight locked brace for a month,” she said. “Being able to sit in a chair was the biggest milestone in the entire world.”

After surgery and 11 months of exercises, Williams returned to the floor, ready to make her comeback, but fate struck again chasing down another rebound less than 25 minutes into her second season at MSU.

With the pain considerably less than the year before, no one thought she had ruptured her ACL again, yet an MRI the following morning revealed another ACL tear — this time in her left knee — and officially ended another season.

However, unlike the previous year, Williams decided she wouldn’t sit at the end of the bench secluded from the team, and instead took a seat next to associate head coach Shane Clipfell and became a valuable assistant coach who Merchant said she would turn to for advice.

“She went up to our equipment manager and said, ‘Why isn’t my jersey in my locker?’” Merchant said. “And that kid wears a jersey with her name on it every night … and (it) keeps her mental focus right where it needs to be.”

Williams will spend her summer in East Lansing rehabilitating her knee and said it’s letters such as the one she received from a high school junior who also recently tore her ACL that help her stay motivated.

“She said it seems like I’ve been doing well with mine, and I’ve been staying positive, and she asked for my advice,” Williams said.

“I want to be that person who, when people are struggling with things, they can say, ‘Wow, she got through it, so that means I can get through it too.’”