Freshman forward Johnathan Williams III scored 11 points, grabbed 15 rebounds, blocked two shots and dished out two assists in Thursday’s Southeastern Conference Tournament game against Texas A&M. A day later, the same player scored just two points and picked up two rebounds.

The highs have been high and the lows have been low for Williams. A starter from day one, Williams possesses the highest ceiling of any of Missouri’s four freshmen. Whether he reaches that ceiling or not hinges on his confidence.

“Once his confidence is set and he’s stable, he’s just a really good player,” junior guard Jordan Clarkson said.

But keeping that confidence up has been tough for Williams. He said the speed and the physicality of the college game were difficult to adjust to.

He didn’t exactly get eased into it either. He’s started all 34 games in his freshman season.

When Missouri faced its toughest stretch of the season — at Arkansas, against Kentucky, at Florida, at Mississippi and back home against Arkansas — Williams scored 11 points in those five games. He grabbed 12 boards at Arkansas, but didn’t get more than six until a month later.

“They call it a freshman wall,” Clarkson said, “and he might have hit it for a little while and started probably thinking to himself, ‘Man, am I doing this or doing that?’ Kind of thinking too much and not just playing.”

Williams received help from the team’s leadership group to help him power through that freshman wall.

In Missouri’s NIT game against Davidson, Williams picked up a questionable foul. He looked to the referee to complain. As he did, Clarkson patted him on the back.

“Just talking to him and letting him know that the tough times, stuff like that, aren’t going to last,” Clarkson said. “You’re going to have tough games, you’re human, just like everybody else. You’re going to have a slump where you might shoot 1-for-9, 1-for-10 in a couple games and you just can’t focus on that. You have to just focus on what’s next and what’s coming then.”

Williams said he preferred the crash course to beginning the season on the bench behind an older player.

“Any player would love to start at a D-I college,” Williams said.

Williams broke into double figures seven times this season, averaging 5.9 points per game. Clarkson said that any scoring Williams puts up is essentially gravy.

“Johnathan is one of those guys, rebounding is always going to be there for him, he’s going to make sure he gets that done,” Clarkson said. “When he’s scoring, shooting the ball, that’s a plus for us, and that’s a plus for him.”

Starting gives Williams a chance to work on his game. For him, the next frontier in his development is scoring the basketball. He wants to be someone who can consistently put up 15 points per game, he said. He said he’d achieve that by putting in work on his offensive game over the summer.

“He just has a lot of room to grow,” Clarkson said. “His ceiling is high. He just has an opportunity to be a great player in this league.”