Williams proved to be “the right man for the job,” not only by returning UNC to its familiar status among the college basketball elite but by keeping it there through a yearslong NCAA investigation that adversely affected recruiting and threatened to cripple the program. ![]() Two years later, he cut down nets for the first time as a national champion alongside holdovers such as current assistant Sean May, Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants and Jackie Manuel. The Tar Heels were one year removed from their worst season ever - an 8-20 disaster in 2001-02 - when he slipped on his first Carolina blue Alexander Julian argyle jacket. “Coach Smith said, ‘We wanted you the first time, but we need you now.’” “It was a different decision,” said Williams, who stopped making promises to recruits about his future coaching plans. ![]() That sense of loyalty, almost as much as the recruiting and coaching ability that helped produce his 903 career wins and those three championship rings, is a trait that best defined Williams’ success over the years.Īnd it’s eventually what brought him back to Chapel Hill, where he played on the freshman team and cut his coaching teeth at the side of fellow Hall of Famer Smith. “I know it’s corny as all get out, but that’s what it was.” “I had promised Nick Collison that I would be there his entire career, and I never could come to grips to the fact that I would leave without doing what I told that kid,” Williams said. He agreed to it on a handshake with his mentor Dean Smith and then-athletic director Dick Baddour, only to change his mind upon returning to Lawrence and attempting to break the news to his Jayhawk players. Williams actually took the UNC job three years earlier. Only time will tell if former Tar Heel star and assistant coach Hubert Davis, the man that has been hired as Williams’ successor, is.īut at least he’s inheriting a program that, even with the disappointments of the past two seasons, is in far better shape than it was when Williams arrived from Kansas in 2003 to clean up the mess left by Matt Doherty. “I no longer feel that I am the right man for the job,” he said with an emotional crack in his voice. When asked at a press conference last Thursday what made him decide it was time to walk away after 18 seasons, three national championships and induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, Williams gave an answer that was anything but expected. ![]() He hinted at his intentions a few weeks earlier when, after beating archrival Duke on Senior Night, he knelt reverently onto the court named in his honor and kissed the logo of his beloved alma mater before heading to the locker room. Roy Williams’ retirement as North Carolina’s basketball coach didn’t come completely as a surprise. Roy Williams speaks with media during last Thursday's news conference in Chapel Hill announcing his retirement after 18 seasons as head coach of the Tar Heels.
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