Mike Urban wanted a different environment, so he took Benny Williams and his IMG Academy teammates to the pond. It was the middle of the 2020-21 season, the point of the year when the mental conditioning coach’s time with his players became limited once the calendar flipped into December and January. Urban took any window he could get.

When the group reached the pond, he asked them how many fish they would catch if they used their hands. Not many, they agreed. They needed bait, as well as rods and fishing line. But, Urban continued, the fish could survive without the bait — once it’s hooked, though, the fish is dependent on the bait’s controller. Urban wanted Williams and the other IMG players to consider what their basketball-related bait resembled, what threw them off during games. Was it a bad call? A missed shot? Parent comments from the stands?

Then, he asked, what could they do after nibbling at that personalized bait and becoming hooked like the fish? “Once you’re on the hook, you have a hard time doing anything else,” Urban said. One missed shot led to two. Turnovers strung together. Comments toward referees resulted in technical fouls. Fish could avoid the hooks by not opening their mouths in the first place, by trying to jump out of the water and detach after they’re hooked or by seeing the hook ahead of time to avoid it altogether. So what, Urban asked his players, will their verbal, physical or visual cue be to reset themselves after an error?

Urban’s lesson wasn’t intended to impact IMG’s next game. It’d take time, which is why he designed a 10-week curriculum — centered around the theme of resilience — for Williams and his teammates. He had “to give them a how,” Urban said. Everything led to finding that individualized cue, and for Williams, that was wiping the bottom of his shoe. It was like a college freshman taking their first psychology class, freeing their mind from the rigidity of thinking, said his father, Ben Williams.

“I think Mike tapped into a part of the athlete that Benny didn’t even know existed,” Ben said.

Williams’ year at IMG validated him as a player in his mind, Ben said. The previous four years of high school — two years on Riverdale Baptist (Maryland) School’s team, a reclassification and second sophomore year at St. Andrew’s Episcopal (Maryland) School, a late blossom onto the radars of college coaches, and finally, a transfer to the prep school — had helped craft that potential. And as Williams grew, from about 5-foot-9 when he started ninth grade to 6-foot-8, the extra height helped him expand his basketball toolbox because Williams already understood the intricacies of a shot, man defense, zone defense and where his strengths as a smaller guard could transition after he grew to resemble a forward.

The unlocking of basketball’s mental complexities and the exponential physical growth that coincided with it has allowed Williams, the only Syracuse freshman on scholarship, to become a bridge between this season’s experience-based roster and next year’s freshman-laden one. But there was still the missing next step, the next peg of basketball maturity, required to prepare for his college and whatever might come next — and IMG showed him how to get to this level.

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“I told him, ‘If you go to IMG, you’re going to be in the gym with other four- or five-stars, and you’ll find out exactly where you are,” Ben said. “And I think he went down there and he proved … he’s a legit player.”

With Urban, Williams initiated additional film sessions to pinpoint real-time examples of how to differentiate between reacting and responding. The reactions contained emotion that carried into subsequent plays, like when a referee made a bad call. The responses were based in belief that they’d get the next call right and Williams would make the next shot.

In situations like those, when frustrations threatened to boil over, Williams learned to use his physical cue, to wipe the bottom of his sneaker, as a way to signify that he moved on from the situation. Urban and Williams also competed in push up and shooting competitions to see if Williams was making progress on what Urban had taught him.

Mornings for Williams occasionally consisted of shooting classes as a window for honing his technique. Williams, at that point around 6-foot-8, had a lot more elevation that he had to work with than in years past. Shooting coach Jimmy Baron said at first, Williams didn’t fully grasp how he could get any shot he wanted with his athleticism. Baron taught Williams to aim for the back of the rim when shooting because hitting that spot would lead to more success as he became tired at the end of the game.

In one shooting drill, Baron penalized players if they made it, or missed it, by hitting the front of the rim, but didn’t dock points if they missed by hitting the back rim. Not every shot will be perfect, he said, and that’s OK. Sometimes, the hand placement on the ball is different. Other times, the release won’t be perfectly centered. As Williams incorporated his lower body into the shot more, that would decrease the error of it.

During games, Williams sparked IMG’s offense in transition by serving as the player that ran the wing after rebounds and then attacked downhill, finishing near the basket with a full head of steam, assistant coach Bob Gallager said. He averaged 16.3 points and 6.0 rebounds per game, and, in its half-court offense, IMG ran Williams off wide pin-downs to open him up for one-dribble pull-ups or 3-pointers. And when defenders tried to steer him away from the 3-point line, Williams swept past them toward the basket and finished through contact.

But before Williams synthesized the two elements of his game like he did with the Ascenders, blending the physical intangibles with the internal understanding of how to maximize them, he needed to fill his evolving frame. Williams positioned himself as one of the better players in his age group growing up, but when his teammates continued growing as teenagers, Williams didn’t at the same rate. “He kind of fell behind physical-stature-wise,” Ben said.

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But when he started high school, that trend changed. Williams didn’t play a typical Amateur Athletic Union schedule with his Mid Atlantic Select team in the summer of 2018 because of growing pains. Ben said an orthopedist told him it wouldn’t be worth it. Williams was growing too fast. When Williams was younger, the doctors had initially told Ben his son would be 6-foot-3. He secretly hoped Williams would be 6-foot-5, because that was the perfect height for a combo guard. But his son had already shot past that point.

He grew from 5-foot-9 in ninth grade to around 6-foot-8 by his second sophomore year, when he arrived at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School for two seasons under Kevin Jones. Like the IMG staff soon later, Jones wanted Williams to push the ball in transition and understand the right pass to make when double-teams arrived. “No one was willing to just guard him one-on-one,” Jones said. Sometimes, they used Williams as a decoy. If they faced a zone, they pivoted to a high-low offense, where Williams was a triple-threat.

“Him growing three inches didn’t really change what we were asking him to do,” Jones said.

That summer, Williams returned to play in a Florida tournament with Mid Atlantic Select and head coach James Lee, where Ben said Syracuse associate head coach Adrian Autry saw him play for the first time and invited him to an Elite Camp. “Why are you inviting him to the Elite Camp?” Ben asked. “He’s not on that level.” Ben knew Williams hadn’t matched the talent level of others at the Elite Camp yet — something he’ll joke with Autry to this day about. “Nah, I saw something in him,” Autry always jabs back.

After COVID-19 threatened to cancel the St. Andrew’s season last year, Williams pounced on an invite from IMG. When Williams returned home that next spring from IMG, Ben bought his son a shooting machine for their driveway. They’d moved to a new house before Williams started his postgraduate year with the Ascenders and shared a mile-long wooded space with Devone Williams, Ben’s cousin. Devone constructed a college-sized half court at his house in 2019, also complete with a shooting machine.

The two houses, and two shooting machines, served as stations for Williams’ summer workouts before coming to Syracuse. Williams, Ben, Devone and Devone’s daughter found a local gym to rent out at 7 a.m., and then went back to the courts at their houses for the afternoon. They worked on Williams’ mechanics, release point and on the elevation he could use to make his shots more difficult to alter and defend. The shooting machine’s high net helped with that, forcing Williams to get more arc on his shot.

These workouts, Devone said, weren’t intended to strip down Williams’ shot and recreate it weeks before summer practices started at Syracuse. He’d already gone through that process when he grew nearly a foot his first three years of high school and essentially learned how to play with his new frame. This time, the workouts were about “constant reminders.” Of how far Williams had come to reach this point. Of the high trajectory that he’d set his career on. Of what he needed to consistently sharpen to ensure his trajectory stayed on point.

At one point during the preseason, Ben drove up to Syracuse to visit Williams and arrived around 10:30 p.m. They thought about grabbing food, but Williams wanted to get shots up with his father. “It’s almost 11 at night, where are we getting shots up?” Ben asked. “The Melo Center,” Williams replied. He had 24-hour access now.

This was before Williams flashed potential during the Orange vs. White event and the two exhibitions that followed in Syracuse’s preseason. It was before head coach Jim Boeheim said Williams was learning every day but still needed time. You can tell when Williams is going to miss his jump shot because it’s flat, Boeheim said.

But for that night, as the clock neared midnight and then passed it, the Melo Center’s court reflected a scene similar to Williams’ development. Just like in their driveway, playing Around the World while Ben flirted with beating his son until Williams said, “let me stop playing with you” and made 10 shots in a row.

Ben passed to Williams, who took his designated shots. Then, Williams passed to Ben, who likes the backboard shots, Williams said. Then they left the building — the same one Ben was surprised his son got invited to three years ago for the Elite Camp — and got food from Wings Over.

The whole time, Williams said, his father couldn’t stop smiling. That night, along with the first exhibition, the transformation felt real to Ben.