University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Williams Looks Back And Ahead
April 10, 2008 | Men's Basketball
April 10, 2008
By Adam Lucas
Roy Williams was supposed to be on an airplane today, winding his way over the Atlantic Ocean on a trip to spend a week with his son, Scott, and Scott's wife, Katie. The younger Williams moved to London last year, and until the Final Four the father and son hadn't seen each other since Christmas. For Roy Williams, who once flew from a UNC hoops overseas trip in Japan to Chapel Hill just to spend a few hours with his children on Christmas morning before flying out to Hawaii to rejoin the Tar Heel basketball team, going over three months without seeing his son qualifies as an eternity.
Williams will, in fact, be on a plane in a few days. But it won't be bound for Barcelona, where he was supposed to meet Scott and Katie and then move on to the Canary Islands. It'll be bound for one of several recruiting events that span the nation over the remainder of April.
"Telling my wife I had to cancel our trip to Europe is probably the second-closest I've ever been to divorce," the head coach said on Wednesday. "But I missed three days of recruiting last week because our team was preparing to go to the Final Four. I didn't feel like I could miss three days next week, too. I need to be out recruiting that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday."
In case you were wondering, Williams says the closest he's been to divorce also has a recruiting bent; after his third year at Kansas, he and his wife, Wanda, took their first vacation since taking the head coaching job in Lawrence. They went to Maui on his cherished Marriott Rewards points. Remember, this was pre-cell phone era. Every afternoon of their trip, he told Wanda he wanted to go jogging. And every afternoon, he'd put on his jogging shoes and go down to the hotel lobby to make recruiting phone calls on a bank of pay phones.
That's the kind of focus that makes Williams a Hall of Famer. It's also the kind of focus that has made this a challenging week.
On Saturday, his team suffered an 84-66 defeat to Kansas in the Final Four. It was easily Williams's largest margin of defeat ever in the NCAA Tournament.
But the score wasn't the only reason it was so painful.
"When I went back to coach at Owen High School (in Asheville), do you know who I wanted to beat the most?" he says. "My old coach, Buddy Baldwin, and Roberson High School.
"That game against Kansas, I wanted to win that game more than any game I've ever coached for obvious reasons. And it's the only time in my life I can remember one of my teams coming out with that kind of energy level."
That energy level, of course, eventually resulted in a stunning 40-12 first-half deficit. And although the Tar Heels surged, it still led to a sleepless Saturday night.
"The next morning, the first day that there's no practice and no game, that's the worst day of your life that doesn't have something to do with an illness in your family," he says. "You feel lost. You've gotten close, but you didn't realize your dream."
Williams remained in San Antonio on Sunday to attend the Naismith Award presentation with Tyler Hansbrough. His son, Scott, and daughter, Kimberly, also remained in town, as neither could find an earlier flight back home. The entire Williams family sat together at Monday night's championship game.
While walking down the aisle to his seat at that game, Williams spotted nine of his former Jayhawk players. While talking to one of them, Ryan Robertson, a bystander handed Williams a Kansas sticker. After taking his seat, Williams affixed the sticker to his shirt.
It was exactly what you'd expect from a man who is always very candid about his emotions. When he's sad, he cries. When he's happy, he beams. When he's rooting on one of his teams--as he's done in Omaha for the past two years following the Diamond Heels, for example, or when he made the 30-minute drive to Cary to watch a Carolina-Princeton baseball game on the Tuesday after winning the ACC Tournament title--he is as vocal about his support as any fan in the bleachers.
That's how he acted in 1993, when his Jayhawks lost to Dean Smith's Tar Heels in the national semifinals. "Let's stay in New Orleans and watch Coach Smith win another one," he told Baldwin.
That's exactly what the pair did, with Williams feverishly waving a blue-and-white pom-pom from his seat in the Superdome. On the way out of the arena after Carolina's win over Michigan, he stopped to buy a t-shirt for Scott and Kimberly--neither of whom had yet attended UNC--that read, "I was there in New Orleans," along with the victorious Tar Heel score.
"I'm pretty consistent," he says. "My team lost to Carolina in 1993 and I stayed and supported Carolina. My team lost to Kansas in 2008 and I stayed and supported Kansas. I am who I am. I'm thankful that I am surrounded by people who understand how I am and support me no matter what, because I realize not everyone in the world falls into that category."
Since returning to Chapel Hill, he's had a chance to have an initial meeting with Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, and Tyler Hansbrough about their upcoming decisions. He's filled out paperwork for the NBA Undergraduate Advisory Committee, and will also contact five other NBA teams not involved with the committee about the future of his talented trio. They'll meet again once the information-gathering process is complete.
Wednesday was the first day he had the opportunity to resume his ritual lunchtime walk (his spring plans also include next week's awards ceremony and this year's Reece Holbrook Golf Classic, which this year also features a concert by Vince Gill)), a circuit that takes him around most of the heart of Chapel Hill.
"It's an unbelievable feeling to be able to walk around campus and get that feeling when you walk down Franklin Street," he says. "Walking down Gimghoul Road and seeing how pretty it can be in the spring is great. And the students that I see always say hello. Being a part of that is neat for me. I love that. It's never been about just coaching a basketball team for me. It's about the University and the love I have for Carolina."
It's coaching, of course, that creates the opportunity for those midday walks. Which reminds us--what happened in that first meeting with Baldwin and Roberson High?
Williams winces.
"He beat me by 55 points," he says. But then he raises an eyebrow.
"But I got him back later."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
