Oregon guard Tyrone Williams announced on Friday that he has entered his name into the transfer portal and will be leaving Eugene after one season.

Williams joined the Ducks last offseason after spending three years at the junior college level with Grayson County College in Texas. The 6-foot-5 guard was one of the top-ranked JUCO players in the class, but he was unable to find a consistent role within Oregon’s rotation this past season.

He played 20 minutes in the opener against Florida A&M and then 17 minutes against UC Irvine four nights later. But from then on through the rest of the regular season, Williams saw at least 10 minutes on the court in a game only five times. From Jan. 7 through the regular-season finale against Stanford, Williams got in for 16 minutes against Cal on March 2 and a combined seven minutes in the other 15 games.

But he emerged from the bench in the NIT when Oregon was short on bodies and in need of players to step up. Williams scored a season-high 12 points while grabbing 11 boards in the opening-round win over UC Irvine, and he scored seven points in 25 minutes in the loss to Wisconsin to end the season.

He departs after making a total of 23 appearances with averages of 2.5 points and 2.0 rebounds on 54.5% shooting.

Though the role never quite materialized the way some would have expected, Williams drew praise from coach Dana Altman late in the year for his commitment to the work.

“It’s not easy. Tyrone is a good player,” Altman said. “He got way behind because he wasn’t here this summer, we went to Canada and he didn’t get to go, we’d been practicing all summer, but he didn’t get here till September, he was way behind. It hasn’t been easy for him but the guys respect the fact that it’s all about the team. It wasn’t going well for him, but he didn’t complain. He was all about the other guys. That’s hard to do, it’s become uncommon.”

 

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