From almost the moment Noah Fuson sat down next to JJ Williams in their respective stalls in the Rhode Island FC locker room, the two hit it off.

“It’s great,” Fuson told USLChampionship.com this week. “Every morning there's music on. He’ll start dancing. I’ll start dancing. We’re always cracking jokes, talking fantasy football.”

For defenses in the USL Championship, that camaraderie and chemistry has been hard to slow down.

One of the marquee transfers of the past USL Championship offseason, Williams has been a force for the first-year side. After overcoming an early-season injury that delayed his debut until May 11, with his first start not coming until later that month, the 6-foot-4 center forward has recorded 11 goals and seven assists across the regular season and playoffs, averaging a goal contribution every 104.4 minutes.

Fuson, meanwhile, has thrived in his first season in the Championship after signing as a free agent. The 24-year-old claimed the Golden Playmaker award with 10 regular season assists and has notched nine goals while sitting fifth in the squad in minutes played.

Add the contributions of 2023 Golden Boot winner Albert Dikwa with 11 goals and four assists, and the trio have developed a tremendous bond in their first season together.

“From the day that I got here, my locker was next to JJ, and he took me under his wing right away and just helped me to get acquainted and get used to things playing at this level,” said Fuson. “Dikwa came a little bit later, but me and him built up a really good connection and really good chemistry on and off the field. They’ve definitely helped me so much in my first season being in the Championship. It’s a great feeling, and it’s just motivation to keep working hard and see how far you can really go.”

For Williams, the past two seasons have been an awakening of a career that showed great promise given his skillset, but at times saw him put into roles that didn’t take full advantage. Playing full time as a center forward for the Rowdies in 2023, he recorded career highs with 12 goals and nine assists while forging a partnership with Cal Jennings that carried Tampa Bay to a second-place finish in the Eastern Conference.

Now he has built a similarly productive partnership with Fuson, who while a very different player to Jennings in Williams’ view still has characteristics that mesh well with what he brings to the field.

“Cal is probably the fastest of those guys,” said Williams. “One thing that worked really well when we were playing together was my hold up play was really utilized. I could just tell him to stretch it, because I feel like I have a pretty good passing range, so I just told him to get in behind, make sure he stays onside, and I'll find him. … Noah is a little bit different, whereas he can come underneath and do a lot of the link play and can pick up the ball underneath when I’m laying it off that way.

“The way it’s been throughout my career, it’s figuring out the strengths of the players that I’m playing with, and then using those with the games that you have in front of you, but also figuring out each other's strengths to make sure that partnership is really as strong as it can be.”

That’s the sort of mentality and camaraderie that has gone beyond the club’s trio of forwards and pervaded the whole Rhode Island squad, something Fuson believes is a key reason why the side has become only the third club to reach a USL Championship Final in its inaugural season. The willingness to have each other’s backs has been evident in the postseason, including in last week’s Eastern Conference Final against the Charleston Battery that saw several chippy moments as players from both sides came together.

Smith believes the personalities Fuson and Williams have brought to the locker room have helped that collective feeling, which now has the side on the verge of history in Colorado Springs this weekend.

“[Noah] just connects with everyone,” said Smith. “He’s in every part of the team, he’s very popular with his teammates. I just think he’s like a glue guy. How he is on the field is how he is off the field, he just kind of blends everything in together. He can go be with anybody, and sit with anybody, have a conversation with anybody, and JJ is similar. I think they’re both pretty public characters, just the cornerstones of our group.”

After their journey together this season side-by-side locker room and on the field, Williams and Fuson have the chance to be gamechangers in the final game of RIFC’s inaugural campaign.