During the 2025 offseason, the University of California, Riverside (UCR) men’s basketball team underwent an intensive rebuilding process. One of the new additions to the staff and team was assistant coach Reuben Williams, who was recently announced on the Silver Waves Media “100 Most Impactful: Men’s Mid Major Assistants/GM’s” list.
“Whenever you’re awarded or acknowledged by your peers, that’s the most respect you can get. But to be acknowledged being at UC Riverside, I’m grateful for [head] coach [Gus] Argenal for giving me this opportunity,” commented Williams.
While still young in his college basketball coaching career, Williams is clearly on the radar, and he stated, “you have to have a sense of gratitude to be recognized in the list like that with your peers that are more experienced at times.”
Williams has always had a love and passion for basketball. He grew up playing and played at the collegiate level at Willamette University. After graduating from California State University, Fullerton, Williams interned at Adidas as a marketing intern.
He emphasized his dedication to building meaningful relationships through the sport. “I was more so interested in connecting with people, mentoring young men, building those relationships and [I] kind of wanted to be the coach that I wanted to have,” explained Williams, making the transition to coaching a very easy decision.
Intentionality is important to Williams, making it easy to connect with the rest of the coaching staff and the team. “You got to show up every day with consistent energy ready to serve our players … I’m trying to be more intentional about the relationship building process with the players in order to hold them accountable at the end,” he noted.
“Having the opportunity to impact our players, and learn from our staff has been an unbelievable experience,” Williams acknowledged. Going further into detail on how he has developed with the coaching staff and team, he added, “I’m learning a lot from [the team] and I am growing in my profession … It’s been great bouncing ideas off each other.”
Prior to coaching at UCR, Reuben Williams had a very successful two years as an assistant coach at the University of Montana. With this experience, Williams is keen on building up the UCR men’s basketball program.
“We’re trying to build a sustainable program that is consistently at the top of the Big West … and establish an identity and a culture in this competitive Big West Conference,” Williams noted.
The Highlanders are continuing to rebuild under a brand new coaching staff, and they hope to improve their play as they currently sit dead-last in the Big West standings. Their next game is on the road at Long Beach State on Jan. 15.
