Williams, Lawrence to Visit St. John’s

This is a big weekend for the St. John’s basketball program.

Jordan Williams, a 6-9 power forward from Torrington (Conn.) High, will make his official visit to the Queens school. Omari Lawrence, a 6-4 guard from South Kent (Conn.) who has already verbally committed to the Johnnies, will also take his official to campus, no doubt working to persuade Williams to join him next year.

Williams previously took an official to Maryland and came away raving about it. He promised St. John’s head coach Norm Roberts he would visit, and so he will. He also mentioned Providence, UMass and Marquette, but it remains unclear whether those schools will actually get official visits. The longer it goes, the better it is for St. John’s.

Meantime, St. John’s is probably hoping Lance Stephenson, who visited unofficially for Midnight Madness, doesn’t fall in love with one of the schools he’s planning visits to. Hassani Stewart, Stephenson’s AAU coach, is working on visits to Kansas and Memphis this month, and possibly USC and UCLA as well.

“Kansas, Memphis, USC and UCLA are the schools Lance wants to visit within the month,” Stewart told JayHawkslant.com. “Brandin Knight from Pittsburgh is really pushing hard for a visit. He’s done a great job of providing a lot of information about the school to Lance, but I just don’t know at this point if a visit to Pittsburgh will happen.”

In other visits this weekend, according to Rivals and other sources: Thomas Robinson, Xavier Henry and onetime Pitt commit Darnell Dodson will visit Memphis; Lamont “Momo” Jones will be at Virginia Tech; Tobias Harris will be at West Virginia; Taran Buie at Notre Dame; Rutgers target Givon Crump will be at Baylor; and Jordan Hamilton returns to USC.