Great to have him back in the Southern Part of Heaven. Roy is total class, obviously understands the Carolina system and I am certain he can bring the Heels back to national prominence. Must have been a tough couple of weeks for him though. Andy Katz says Bill Self is the top candidate for the KU job.
ESPN1000 in Chicago reported earlier today that Villanueva(sp) was either going to committ for the NBA or go to Illinois. All depending on what happens to Self.
if self leaves for kansas <which looks to be certain> then villanueva is heading to the nba, mark it down.
Inside Carolina is reporting that Williams' assistants will be Phil Ford, Joe Holladay and Steve Robinson. Re-hiring of Phil Ford is key, as he was someone who related very well with the players and perhaps having Ford on staff could have saved Matt Doherty's job. Plus, he will represent a link to Dean Smith's staff. Holladay and Robinson were both Williams' assistants at Kansas, though Robinson was the head coach at Tulsa from 1995 to 97 and Florida State from 97 to 02. fidlerre - on your sig, that's Jules' mum, not Jess's that's learning the offside rule. And nice avatar.
Well, I'll happily root for Williams and expect good things from him but...but... did Larry Brown even get a sniff I wonder?
I just hope that Roy carries on in his tradition of always ending up second-best. But I guess that'd be a vast improvement over the last two seasons at UNC.
As of Saturday, LB complained about all the speculation, which means... I have no idea. http://espn.go.com/ncb/news/2003/0412/1538056.html It seems he is still a little bitter from not getting a call despite wanting the job 3 years ago. Next season, for the first time in many, many years, Carolina will have a team that can play uptempo, high pressure defense, perfect for Roy Williams.
Roy Williams vs Coach K twice a season? IMHO those are the two best coaches in College Basketball. No one has matched their consistent excellence year in and year out. The coach that comes the closest (that I can remember off-hand anyway) is Jim Calhoun at UConn.
I find it amusing that one week and a day after losing the national championship game that Roy Williams took the job at NC. It was quite amazing to hear him lose his composure slightly and say to the reporter following the game that he acknowledged her need to ask the question, but it was still a bullshit question.
Well if I wasn't so busy this past week, I would have chimed in. Frankly, I'm glad he's gone. He finally showed his true colors and true personality. The man we worshipped for 15 years and "Gave him our everything!" (to steal from Roy) isn't the same man now. I dunno when this change happened, but he's clearly not the aw-shucks guy who taught good morals and ideas to his kids. Note... This is NOT because he simply left. Kansas fans are not pissed simply because he left. We understand his decision to leave, it was his dream and he's got every right to change jobs. We are mad about the way he went about it. 3 years ago we went through a week of torture wondering if he was going to leave or not. We gave him his room to make his decision and we totally would have understood if he left. Thanks for 12 years, best of luck to you. But he decided to come back and tell us that Kansas was the epicenter of college basketball, there's no other coaching job that is better, the net press conference like this is either going to be when he is fired or he retires, the reason for his decision was for his kids, blah blah blah. There we go, we know we have a coach for life. The intensity around Allen Fieldhouse and the program tightened considerably. Scot Pollard said the family was tighter than ever, first hand I know the fans were more into it, and more into Roy. It was a fun three years. Here's why we are pissed at him. HE DOES THE EXACT SAME THING AGAIN! What made it worse is this time it was during the Final Four. You could already sense the tension in my words from that quote posted above. Honestly, I actually didn't give a ************. I wasn't going to go through all that again for a man who made promises that he couldn't live up to. The man I once thought was stronger than anyone I'd ever met was showing weakness, he'd changed. I, along with many other Kansas fans started to imagine what it would be like without Roy, and we got kind of excited about bringing Bill Self in here, imagining what he could do with our teams. No insult to Illinois, that's a really talented team, but next year Kansas will have at least 5 NBA players on it's roster (Miles, Langford, Simien, Padgett, and Giddens) And then there is a couple more wildcards in Wilkes and Graves who might have a shot. We can see Self bringing us things Williams never could. It was a lot of fun winning 80% of our games, and winning a dozen or so championships in the conference and Big XII tournament. But every year the season always neded up with a loss and always ended with listening to Roy cry. It's tough, I know, he should take it harder than anyone. But when he held the press conference in North Carolina, he stated the one thing that pissed me off more than anything. "Nobody will ever root for Kansas harder than I will." F You! If you did then you wouldn't have left. Don't claim to be a bigger fan than those 16,000 that pack Allen Fieldhouse every night because many of them have been Jayhawks their entire lives, you were only one for 15 years and you left. That was insulting. Now, he continues to linger around and hold press conferences and attend the Kansas basketball banquet as the North Carolina head coach. It is very insulting. It's not arrogance when I say this because we all feel this way about our school. Kansas is #1. The tradition at Kansas is unmatched. The program is the best in the country, the best there is. It's pride. Now if one of you refuted those statements, I have no problem with it, I don't want to hear a Hoosier, or a Blue Devil, or a Bruin say anything other than "No! My school is the best!" It's pride. But when someone within the family says that, it hurts, it really does. That is why there is such a backlash among the KU nation against Roy. Because 3 years ago, we had no more doubts about his loyalty to Kansas, he fully accepted him as a Jayhawk cause he'd proven it. Then, he goes, turns his back, and walks away, taking back everything he'd ever said about loyalty, the importance of relationships, being a Jayhawk, Kansas University, the tradition, the program, EVERYTHING. Then, he starts recruiting the players he would have had coming in next year, which was insane! Roy Williams' ego is finally showing. It's all about Roy, all the time. He can't do wrong, he can't say anything stupid. He's a good ol', aw-shucks boy from the south who everybody loves and respects. He's had his ego stroked for 15 years at Kansas and he doesn't know anything different. So now he thinks he can pull the same ************ around here, but we aren't falling for it because we know it's just a show. It's all about his ego. The first thing he said at the banquet last night was "I came here for the players" then the rest of his 10 minute speech was all about him. What!?!? Just shut the hell up. If those 3,000 fans in attendance weren't all high level donors who have been kissing your ass for years, if they would have been the students and other normal Jayhawk fans, you wouldn't have gotten a standing ovation with 1 "TRAITOR!" in the background, you would have gotten a response you never would have expected to come from Kansas. That's what we're mad about, his insult to the Kansas tradition. Our program is 2nd to none and you just slighted that. Your ego was too big for Phog's Fieldhouse anyways, glad you're gone and don't let the Jayhawk kick you on the way out. I want to vent more but I'm going to stop here after I say one more thing. What is it with the Carolina ego? I understand pride, but when you accept prided opinions as fact, that's when it becomes a problem. Dean Smith, just before the season starts, wakes up one morning and thinks... I'm just not excited about coaching anymore, I'm done. And then he turns his back on his players and just walks away. Why not sacrifice something for the players?!? Make the ultimate sacrifice and legitimately give them one year of your life, one final season. But nope... I'm god here, I don't have to do that. It's safe to say that no one in the KU nation respects this man, this KU alum who won a national championship with the father of basketball coaching. He's not a Jayhawk anymore and don't think about coming back to our state anytime soon. Roy Williams... I covered his ego, so now let's move on to the most famous Carolina ego of all time... Michael Jordan. I'm going, I'm staying, I'm going, I'm staying. Make up your damn mind, you legacy is being tarnished, and before not too long it will be just like Roy's at Kansas, nothing. God that was long, but I could keeo going for another hour or two, but I'll refrain from boring you anymore, that is... if you actually bothered making it this far. But that is the Kansas perspective.
As a Syracuse fan and a PSU alum, I am really glad that I won't ever have to go through this crap. Jim Boheim has been Coach of Syracuse for longer than I have been alive (and I've been rooting for these guys since I was 5 years old), and I know he'll coach at Syracuse until he permanantly retires from basketball. Same thing with Penn St football. Its JoePa!! Roy Williams had the chance to become the Joe Paterno of College Basketball. But I don't blame him for leaving Kansas. I blame Dean Smith. And I have lost all respect for him. This is a guy who won a national championship at Kansas. He probably recomended the University to Hire Williams 15 years ago. He KNOWS what Williams meant to the community and the school. He KNOWS what kind of hole would be left behind with Roy's departure. Yet he begged Roy Williams to leave. He forced Roy to choose between the two professional love's of his life. His school that has been with for 15 wonderful years, or his mentor. I asked this before, but who the hell does Dean Smith think he is? How the hell is he allowed to do this to people. All I gotta say at the end of all this is this: ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK!!
He wanted to go to North Carolina. For whatever reason, he didn't/couldn't earlier. Now he has the opportunity to take the job he wants most of all. I don't see anything wrong with what he's doing and I fail to see how it's different from any other coach taking what they see at the time as a better job. And of course, as long as you're coaching at X University you're going to say X University is the epicenter of the basketball world. That's to be expected from anyone.
Once again... Kansas fans aren't pissed about him simply leaving, it's all about how he left, classless and a liar. And better job? Roy doesn't see North Carolina as a better job. Nor a worse job, he can accomplish the exact same things at either school. Between '98 and 2005 he will have sent at least 10 NBA players through the Kansas pipeline, how mch better can you get than that? This decision wasn't about one school being better than the other, it was about where he felt his heart was and he made the right choice, just went about it wrong. It's one thing to be coach of North Dakota St. and claim your school is the center of the basketball universe, people know it's coach-speak. But when you can make the strongest arguement for your school being that center of basketball (Naismith; The father of basketball coaching, Phog Allen; Dean Smith, Adolph Rupp, Wilt Chamberlain, etc..) it carries a different signifigance. You don't say something like that unless you mean it because people are going to believe what you say. skipshady, have fun with him, we did. But honestly, with either Bill Self or Larry Brown as his replacement, I'm happy he's gone. The Kansas family has tightened up so much that past week that it makes me so proud to see the love former players have for the school and that it wasn't all because of Roy. Kansas basketball existed before Roy, and it will exist after Roy. It was 15 good years, not great, but good. The latter half of his career he had the talent, but the first half of his career he had the wins. Something you'll learn about Roy is he sacrifices individual talent for team, which is great for regular season, but for that final game of the season, you need to allow the star player to shine. That's always been his biggest criticism and maybe he's finally starting to get over that from what Kirk and Nick did i nthe tourny, but who knows. The coaching job he did in the championship game was awful as well, and I'm 100% confident that Self and Brown could have done a better job than Roy did. Coaching tactics don't make free throws of course, but coaching tactics do put you in the position where you don't have to make all of them. So yeah, I'm glad he's gone, either Self or Brown is an improvement, and I fully expect this Kansas team to repeat another Final 4 appearance.
That's a very limited criteria for what makes a better job. Location for one, is another factor. Maybe he likes the administration at North Carolina better, too. Which is a better job is not simply determined by which basketball program is capable of winning the most. I'm sure Williams has his own criteria none of us know exactly what they are.
Lucid tell us what you really think of Williams. His interview following the national championship game was very telling. It was all about theatrics. I agree the man is a hypocrite. It was all posturing, the decision to coach NC was made the moment what's his name was fired. appoonu, what are you on man? You seriously think that this is Dean Smith's fault? First dibs on the NC job went to Smith long time assistant coach Bill whatever his name is. Williams needed to go elsewhere to work on his resume and get the needed experience to coach. Better or worst it all comes down to personal experience. NC was Williams dream job. It always has. He probably has fond memories of the area. maybe Smith told him that one day he would be the next head coach of the tarheels. Who knows, maybe he grew up there or some other intangible factors are at play besides his longing to be Smith's successor.
A few notions that make me laugh: - that Roy Williams, a grown man, couldn't make a decision for himself - that Dean Smith, also a grown man who has been known to be very open minded and have genuine care for his assistants and players, would not have forgiven Williams for staying at Kansas - that because Smith stayed at Carolina when the Kansas job was open so somehow, Williams, a completely different person from Smith best to my knowledge, should do the same and pass up the Carolina job - that some yahoos posting on a soccer site can read Williams' mind - that one man't can't have (close to) equal love for two institutions and can't genuinely be torn over the decision - that losing a coach who took a team to four Final Fours, including 3 title games, and made Big 12 his bitch is a good thing - that some have the nerve to incorrectly write "Tar Heels" as one word. Oh, the hubris!
You ever hear Roy Williams talk about Dean Williams? That man meant everything to Roy and I'm not even sure how said no 3 years ago. Hell yes this is Dean Smith's fault. No way you say no to your mentor twice. I seriously doubt that Roy Williams would have went to North Carolina if the UNC AD had talked to Williams instead of Smith.