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Buck told writer Kerry Eggers in his 1991 book, "Blazer Profiles," that he felt so strongly about his ancestors that he became a voracious student of genealogy, spending many hours digging through in the state archives in Raleigh. He was able to trace his family back of 1795 on the maternal side. "I was fascinated to see the slave owners' inventories," he told Eggers. "I took me down a lot of roads."
As a youngster, Buck loved the outdoors. He and teammate Kevin Duckworth on the '90s Blazer team shared their love of fishing and walking in the woods.
As far as sports were concerned, football was his first love (he liked the contact, which was later to be his bread and butter in the NBA), but he soon switched to basketball because a friend who lived behind the Williams' home has a basket to practice on.
By the time Buck was a ninth grader, he was 6-foot-3 and starting to dunk the ball. He got better quickly and began to believe that basketball was a sport he could one day master.
As a high school senior at Rocky Mount, the then 6-foot-6, 180-pound Williams led his team to the state 4-A title, averaging 20 points and 20 rebounds a game during the tournament.
All of a sudden he was on the short list of top recruits throughout the nation, but chose Maryland because its coach Lefty Driselll made a good impression on a recruiting visit and "seemed to be down-home type of guy."
Williams played three seasons at Maryland. He was ACC Rookie of the Year in 1979, citing Ex-Terrapins John Lucas and Len Elmore as role models. He led the Atlantic Coast Conference in rebounding twice (1979 and 1981), while averaging 15.5 points per game in his sophomore and junior years. He earned first-team All-American honors in 1981 and earned All-ACC honors in 1980 and 1981. He returned to Maryland in 1988 to earn his college degree.
National recognition of his performances came when he was selected to the 1980 USA Olympic basketball team, along side such players as Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre. However, never got to represent his country in Moscow due to the United States' boycott.
In 2002, Williams was one of eight former Maryland players to be named to the ACC's 50th Anniversary Men's Basketball Team.
For Blazer fans, the lasting image of Buck Williams' value to the team came as the buzzer sounded on May 31, 1990, as Portland defeated Phoenix, 112-109 to win NBA's the Western Conference championship.
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