Cummings Alum Drew Williamson Returns to Final Four as Michigan Coach

Drew Williamson left Hugh M. Cummings High School in Burlington in 2003 as the NCHSAA Male Athlete of the Year, with two state basketball championships, a football state title, and 9,736 career passing yards on his resume. This Saturday he will take his place on the coaching bench at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis as an assistant coach for the University of Michigan, marking his second Final Four appearance in four seasons and one of the most quietly remarkable coaching trajectories to come out of Alamance County.

The path there required one pivotal door to close before the right one opened. Williamson had originally planned to walk on at UNC, where he would have backed up star point guard Raymond Felton, but when Roy Williams replaced coach Matt Doherty and declined to bring him in, Old Dominion's Blaine Taylor called late in the recruiting process. Williamson signed with ODU in May 2003 and became one of the program's most durable players, setting a school record with 130 consecutive games played while ranking third all-time in steals (215) and seventh in career assists (555). The Monarchs won 81 games from 2005 to 2007, reaching two NCAA Tournaments and the 2006 NIT Final Four.

After three professional seasons in Germany, where he won a league championship in his final year, Williamson returned to coach under Taylor at ODU for two seasons before spending eight years building his resume at Division II Virginia State. The Minority Coaches Association named him one of the country's top DII assistants in 2020, and he was one of 12 finalists for the "Next Up" Head Coaches Training Initiative. In 2021, he joined Dusty May's staff at Florida Atlantic, and two seasons later he stood on the Final Four court as the Owls went 35-4 before losing to San Diego State 72-71 on a buzzer beater. When May accepted the Michigan head coaching job in Ann Arbor, Williamson followed.

"It's one of those goals you have when you start coaching," Williamson said this week. "You go to the Final Four, you go to all those coaching conventions and you kind of look out there and say 'man, I would love to do that one day' and to have the opportunity to do it twice, you don't take it for granted."

Michigan, the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region, enters Saturday's semifinal against No. 1 West seed Arizona (36-2) at 35-3, a program record for wins. It is the Wolverines' ninth Final Four appearance and third in the last ten NCAA tournaments.

For George Robinson, who coached Williamson at Cummings from 1995 to 2011 and now serves as the Alamance-Burlington School System's athletics director, the moment doubles as proof of concept for every player who has come through those same hallways. "How proud am I of him," Robinson said when Williamson reached his first Final Four with FAU. "I guess I was hoping it was going to be him as a player. We had talked about that at some point the ball is going to stop bouncing, and coaching might be a thing for him. Now we're living through him." Robinson added that Williamson's rise suggests a head coaching opportunity may not be far off: "Drew is a natural-born leader anyway. It might not be long before he has his own team."

Williamson's career offers Cummings athletes and coaches a specific case study: elite local credentials earned a scholarship, a veteran mentor shaped an identity, and patient work at smaller programs built credibility that transferred to a Power-5 staff. The program Robinson spent sixteen years shaping now has one of its own guiding a national championship contender.