Transfer Kevin Williams: MSU's defense 'really fits me'

Kevin Williams is looking forward to three things when he returns to East Lansing: a slice of Bell’s Greek Pizza, a dish of MSU Dairy Store ice cream and a main course of Michigan State football.

The first two are familiar fare. The Spartans’ newest defensive tackle, who announced his graduate transfer from Nebraska on Monday, will begin to digest the third this summer.

Williams grew up a fan of the green and white and used to make Father’s Day trips to MSU with his family from their home near Toledo. It's his stepfather Mark Deel’s alma mater.

“We’ve long been Spartan supporters. Even when my husband and I were dating, that was kind of one of the places that he took me,” Williams’ mother, Lisa Deel, said Monday night. “We used to get alumni tickets and frequent Michigan State football games. And of course, basketball, too. We’ve always maintained there’s nothing like Michigan State basketball.

“And now the football program has proven itself to be up there with the basketball program.”

Her son will become an integral part of it soon. Mark Dantonio and MSU won the services of the 6-foot-2, 275-pounder from Holland, Ohio, for one season by beating out a number of suitors, including Alabama and Texas A&M.

“It’s been a crazy recruitment process. I never had any idea that all these schools would be after me. But in the end, Michigan State was right for me,” Williams said Tuesday from Lincoln. “I loved Michigan State ever since high school. It was a tough decision out of high school to pick Nebraska, but really I would have been good either way. And I saw that more and more as we played Michigan State over the years and watched film on their defense – I really saw that their defense really fits me well.”

A number of injuries curtailed Williams’ playing time for the Cornhuskers, which he said also allowed him to accelerate his educational pursuits. He sat out the 2011 and 2013 seasons with knee injuries, then battled a nagging soft tissue injury last season that limited him to eight games and two starts.

The 23-year-old “capitalized on my time off from football” by earning his undergraduate degree from Nebraska in management in August 2014, then recently completing his master’s degree there in construction engineering and management. He also spent the summer of 2015 on an engineering internship with Kiewit Building Group.

Williams will work toward a second graduate degree in sports administration at MSU. His goal is to get a job in the construction industry once he’s done playing football.

“I know very little about football, but I know the value of having a strong academic foundation. That’s just how I raised him,” Williams’ mother said. “I know football is his passion and his desire is to go to the NFL, but we all know you need to have a Plan B. And he’s always taken academics as seriously as football.”

In 23 career games at Nebraska, including four starts, Williams had 27 tackles and three sacks. He recorded four tackles, three quarterback hurries and a fumble recovery in his injury-shortened 2015 season.

Williams said he’s “all healed up from that stuff” and feels 100 percent healthy going into his sixth season of eligibility, which the NCAA granted in November. He is studying MSU’s playbook while he plans for his move to East Lansing sometime this summer.

“(Coach Ron Burton) said I should expect to play a big role,” Williams said. “They like my quickness, the way I use my hands. They’re a team that likes to get vertical, so my quickness off the ball and lateral quickness really fits their scheme. They like to get after it really aggressively and attack.”

He’ll have a chance to contribute immediately for the Spartans, who lost three players at defensive tackle in the offseason – Joel Heath graduated, Craig Evans left the team for “personal reasons,” and Damon Knox opted to not pursue a sixth year of eligibility from the NCAA. Junior starter Malik McDowell returns as MSU’s only defensive tackle with significant game experience.

Williams was a three-star recruit in 2011 out of Springfield High in suburban Toledo. MSU was among six Big Ten schools to offer him a scholarship out of high school, but he chose Bo Pelini’s program. Pelini was fired after the 2014 season.

“In hindsight – as the cliche goes, it’s always 20/20 – in his years at Nebraska, he often regretted that he didn’t go to Michigan State,” Lisa Deel said. “So I think everything just lined up perfectly, where he wouldn’t use a year of eligibility. And he’s a great fit for the program.”