Latest posts (RSS 2.0)It has been an interesting road for Roy Williams. The University of North Carolina Tar Heels’ basketball coach has come full circle. He’s now back at his alma mater, but he’s about to face the program that made him nationally famous, and there’s only a berth in the national championship final on the line Saturday to raise the stakes.
Williams played for the Tar Heels’ junior varsity team during his collegiate career, and graduated from North Carolina in 1972 with an education degree. He went on to become a high school coach and athletic director and then returned to UNC in 1978 as an assistant to coaching legend Dean Smith. He served as an assistant coach for 10 years at UNC and then got his big break when he left in 1988 to take over the University of Kansas Jayhawks from famed head coach Larry Brown, who had just led the team to a national championship. Brown jumped up to coach the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, leaving Williams with both high expectations and recruiting violations to deal with.
Williams did remarkably well, though, for a man whose first job as a university head coach was taking over a huge program after an unexpected championship. His team went 19-12 in his first year, despite the sanctions handed down by the NCAA for violations committed under Brown’s tenure. The best was yet to come.
In the years to come, Williams’ Jayhawks went on an amazing run. They made every NCAA tournament between 1989 and 2003 and advanced to the Final Four three times. Over that span, Williams’ teams won 418 games and only lost 101 to record an incredible winning percentage of 80.5 per cent. He was named the National Coach of the Year four times.
Unfortunately, Williams’ greatest triumph with Kansas came just before his departure. He took the Jayhawks to the 2003 national championship game, but they lost a 81-78 heartbreaker to the Syracuse Orange. There was speculation a return to North Carolina was imminent, even though he had publicly avowed to stay with Kansas only three years earlier. Kansas did everything they could to accommodate Williams, even firing athletic director Al Bohl, who had publicly clashed with Williams on several occasions. Still, it wasn’t enough, and Williams flew the Jayhawk coop to rejoin the Tar Heels.
Kansas fans were rightly outraged by Williams’ departure, and showed their disapproval in many poignant ways. One of the most memorable was the relocation of the sketch of Williams hanging in the Downtown Barbershop, a local landmark and hair-cutting business which also serves as a shrine for all things Jayhawks. It went from a place of honour on the wall to hanging above the toilet in the newly-rechristened Roy Room.
“We figured if Roy had stuck around, they would have named a building after him,” John Amyx, owner of the Downtown Barbershop, told the Associated Press. “So we decided to name a room after him. That seemed to be the best place to see his picture, too.”
As J. Brady McCullough of the Kansas City Star wrote, the resentment still runs hot in Kansas five years later.
“For some, that’s what makes KU-Carolina a dream scenario,” he wrote. “Beat Williams, North Carolina and those diamond-patterned shorts on the way to a national championship, and it’s even sweeter.”
This should be an epic game. You have Kansas coach Bill Self, who has had great runs in the tournament but is cracking the Final Four for the first time, against Williams, who is third all-time in NCAA winning percentage. You have two great teams, both top-ranked in their regions entering the tournament, set to duel for the right to go to the championship match. Most importantly, though, the Jayhawks’ fans finally have a chance at revenge. They’ve been waiting five long years for this moment but have never come up against Williams in the NCAA tournament. On Saturday night, it’s Williams and his old/new team against the program where he built his reputation. There will be plenty of people rooting for Williams to get another crack at the elusive championship, but very few of them will be from Kansas.
Update: I incorrectly wrote that Williams had never won a national championship. In fact, as Mike pointed out, he won the 2005 national championship with UNC. Apologies for the error.
