City of Basketball Love

Owen McCue (@Owen_McCue)
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For the past several years, it was both easy and hard to predict where Brandon Williams was headed on weekends and weeknights during the winter.

He was likely checking in on one of his guys. Where exactly that was might be all over the place.

Whether that was at a local high school to watch Ryan Williams and Mark Butler go at it or a trip to the Pavilion to see the likes of Marquette’s Stevie Mitchell and Villanova’s Chris Arcidiaocno face off in the Big East, Williams was a familiar face in the stands at the games of his Philly Pride players — past and preset.

Those trips will be far less frequent this winter as Williams has a new group of guys, a new team of young men to guide. He was recently named the Penn Charter head boys basketball coach, taking his first plunge into the high school coaching ranks.

“Yea, I won’t be making my rounds,” said Williams, who was announced as PC’s head coach on June 13. “I’ll be very, very central, now that we got it going on. I think that’s one of the best things that came from AAU, was being a fan throughout  the high school season. I’m going to miss that, but obviously I’ll still have my guys in college, and I still get to be fans of them too.”

Williams has a basketball background with all kinds of ties to the area. He was originally a standout at Abington Friends, helping the Kangaroos to an FSL title before heading off to a 1,000-point career at Chestnut Hill College, where he ended his career ranked in the top five of in 14 statistical categories in the program’s history.

He spent three seasons as an assistant at his alma mater under former head coach Jesse Balcer, one of his mentors in the sport and noted former Prep Charter coach Dan Brinkley as someone who really helped him early on. 

He’s spent the last 10 springs/summers coaching at Philly Pride, including winning the UAA U-16 Championship in 2019, where he’s been able to build relationships with guys like Temple head coach Adam Fisher. 

“That program has done wonders for me from a platform standpoint, allowing me to coach and really kind of understand my passion,” Williams said. “When I came to Philly Pride, I really didn’t understand what coaching was going to do for me or what I wanted to do. I just knew that I wanted to help kids how my AAU coaches helped me.

"And then 20-something Division I recruits later, a national championship later, it’s turned into what it’s turned into. I think ultimately man, this is going to be a lot of making sure I tell everybody how much Philly Pride has helped me out and put me in a spot to be successful.” 

Williams is big on player development, something that certainly comes from coaching at the grassroots level. His goal was to get his players to the next level, particularly Division I, where he sent more than 20 players over his tenure. 

His style has always been as a players coach — ensuring his players compete and play team basketball but systematically focusing on getting each player in the best position to succeed.

“I got concepts that I think make sense and that I think will be a staple, right as a culture,” Williams said. “I'm always going to have certain things that we expect to transfer from year to year.”

“But I want our team to really be based around the team we have every year. I want our kids to really kind of feel a part of what’s going on outside of game day. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned that can be beneficial is to be a players coach.”

“It's one of the things that we're like if basketball changes everyday,  I definitely want to make sure my approach to the game changes,” he added.

Williams wasn’t too sure about jumping into coaching high school hoops until a few years ago and had college ambitions at one point. He said he interviewed at Siena last offseason and talked with Fisher when he took over at Temple this spring.

However, a few years ago when the job at Abington Friends opened up, Williams began to see himself coaching at the high school level for the first time, particularly in the private school/PAISAA ranks. 

Things aligned this spring when the Penn Charter position officially became open as Williams had a switch in his job that allowed him to work almost fully remote. It was a long process, but he found out in late May that he got the job.

The relationship he had with his predecessor certainly helped in the process.

Dave Bass, a former girls coach at PC, coached the girls at Abington Friends when Williams was a player. He took over as interim head coach last year and will be around to help Williams’ transition this season, which included coaching the Quakers during the scholastic live periods.

“It was funny. I couldn’t stand Dave,” Williams recalled of his time at AFS

“When I was younger, you know, you just don't understand, you’re like who is this dude who’s always breaking our balls right? As I got older, I started working with him, because I worked at AFS summer camp in college, and you just come to and just understand as you get more mature, like yo you know what, he means well.”

Penn Charter shared the Inter-Ac title with Malvern Prep in each of the past two seasons. Williams takes over a group without a lot of experience beyond star 2025 guard Kai Shinholster. He’s excited to get to know the group and begin to shape the program with some of the things he values.

“I think you knew when you called me I was going to talk about winning a championship,” Williams said. “That’s a no brainer, but I’m more so about trying to establish a particular culture that becomes something that you see when you come to a Penn Charter game. Whether it be an up year, whether it be a down year.

"You know when you see guys play, you’re going to see guys competing for each other to do something bigger than just them and then just playing the right way, having to fight and ultimately having to fight to get better. Those are the immediate goals is to kind of establish that culture that feeds into winning, and then at that point that’s when I think results will come.”