TUSCALOOSA, Alabama - When coaches, teammates and friends talk about how far Jesse Williams has come, they gush. Some refer to distance, others to discipline.

Literally, he has come 9,230 miles to Alabama. It's 7,450 miles from the picturesque beaches of Brisbane on Australia's east coast to the barren desert outside Yuma, Ariz., where he played football for two years at Arizona Western Community College.

And it's 1,780 more miles from Yuma to Tuscaloosa, where he is a starting defensive end this season for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Figuratively, Williams has come farther. Miles don't measure the distance he has come from a raw talent to a polished player.

Though still a work in progress, Williams is only a few months removed from playing "bulla-bulla ball." That's the term Alabama coach Nick Saban coined in April to describe Williams' lack of technique and training.

Five months later, look where the 6-foot-4, 319-pound Williams is now.

"Jesse's probably made the most significant improvement from spring practice until now as probably just about any player on our team," Saban said last week. "He has ability, he has great size, he has good initial quickness, he can run.

"The technical aspects of playing football, the instinctive reactions that you use, how to use your hands, how to pass rush, those kind of things were things that he was a little behind on. But he's a bright guy, he learns really well, he works hard, he wants to be good, he's got a great attitude, so he has made tremendous progress in becoming a good player for us."

Williams played rugby, Australian Rules Football and basketball before he tried football at age 14. Until this year, he was getting by with his significant size, strength, power, quickness and speed.

"Obviously going from junior college and Australia, my technique was raw and still is," Williams said. "Coming up here to Division I, it's a bit of a reality check with everything's the same size and I'm just as fast as you. So I think technique is what sets you apart."

Andrew Power was impressed when he saw his best friend from Arizona Western on film Tuesday.

"He's gotten so much better, it's not even funny," Power said. "In the spring, he hadn't really lit the world on fire. I knew this was going to happen when he got some Division I coaching. He was getting better every day at Arizona Western. He's lost a little weight. ... I knew he was fast, but I didn't know he was that fast. He's just got better technique."

Power traveled 2,340 miles himself from Myrtle Beach, S.C., to play at Arizona Western. Now - it's a small world, after all - Power starts at tight end for North Texas, which means he will try to block Williams on Saturday night when the Mean Green visits Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Second?

"He figured out that I knew a good amount about college football," said Power, a former walk-on at South Carolina. "He would get offers from people and he wouldn't even know who they were. He wouldn't even know what the state was or anything. He'd ask me how good they are, what conference they're in."

They tracked his letters on a dry-erase board and put check marks by the schools that offered scholarships. The check mark next to Alabama came early.

Alabama offensive coordinator Jim McElwain and Arizona Western offensive coordinator Michael Orthmann are close friends. They coached together at Eastern Washington and Montana State.

"That's how Alabama even found Jesse to start with," Power said. "Saban, I mean, he was on him, man. He was recruiting the fool out of the guy."

Williams was "blown away" when he visited Alabama, Power said.

"We might have had about 150 fans out there," Power said of Arizona Western. "I would imagine there weren't too many more than that in Australia.

"I warned him before he went, 'Look, dude, it's going to be crazier than anything you've ever dreamed of.' Coming from the desert where the whole student population shares one weight room and they have one cafeteria, and then you go someplace like Alabama, I said, 'You need to brace yourself for what you're going to see.'"

Williams had two tackles (one solo) and broke up a pass Saturday in a 27-11 victory at Penn State. He was credited with a quarterback hurry in his debut, a 48-7 victory over Kent State.

His parents were among a mix of 16 family members and friends who came from Australia to Tuscaloosa for a week before and after the opener.

"They were just blown away by everything," Williams said.

Saban entertained the group at his house after the game.

"It was great," he said at a news conference. "I got my Aborigines rugby shirt with the name on the back. I got all kind of boomerangs. In fact, I was going to bring one of them in here, just to practice up, see if it would work."

Williams' new teammates have embraced him on and off the field.

"He's learned it pretty fast," senior nose guard Josh Chapman said. "You see when he knows the defense, he's hard to block and he's hard to stop."

Senior center William Vlachos didn't know what to expect from an Australian.

"Sometimes people coming from other places are kind of weird," Vlachos said. "But he's the guy you want to go to dinner with right now. He's one of the coolest ... chill people that you could be around."

Williams is going with the flow as he continues to encounter new experiences. Teammates told him, for instance, that he needed to wear a suit for a road trip.

In State College, Pa., defensive end Damion Square told Williams that the team hotel was the scene of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

"I don't think he got the joke," Square said. "He was just laughing, like, 'Really?'"

Williams was playing along.

"I knew he was trying to joke with me," Williams said. "They try to lead me in the right direction. Sometimes ... not always."

The direction he is going is forward. The pace is fast. The distance he has gone keeps growing. When he finally arrives, look out.