by Roy Williams
At that point there was a controlled panic. We had lost our top seven scorers from the year before. That spring and summer we tried to recruit some more players who could help us that season, but we never did find anybody.
We had signed Tyler, Marcus Ginyard, Danny Green, Bobby Frasor, and Mike Copeland. It was a strong recruiting class, but now we realized we were going to be depending heavily on freshmen. Our starters ended up being Bobby and Marcus and Tyler, along with junior Reyshawn Terry and senior David Noel. David, who was originally recruited as a football player, had averaged 3.9 points per game the year before and he was our leading returning scorer. We knew we would have to build our offense around Tyler, a freshman, getting 20 shots a game. It was one of the few teams I have ever coached that didn’t have a target on its back. Sports Illustrated didn’t even pick us to make the NCAA Tournament.
Before the start of the season, I met with David. “You’re going to have to be the greatest leader of all time,” I said. “How you play and what you say are going to set the example for what I want everybody else to do.” David embraced that challenge and it became David’s team. He just let me coach it.
David hit the game-winning shot in our season opener against Gardner-Webb and began the season as the leader I had hoped he could be. But then early in the conference season, we lost consecutive games against Miami and Virginia, and I could tell David was feeling a lot of pressure. He was so stressed out that he was crying in the locker room after the Virginia game. I tried to console him a little bit that night and then I asked him to come visit with me in the office the next day. He came in and he broke down again.
I told him, “David, I know what your problem is. Raymond’s in the NBA, Sean’s in the NBA, Rashad’s in the NBA, Marvin’s in the NBA, and you’re not. You’re still here. You want to do something like that for your family, too.”
David said, “Coach, I just want to buy my mom a house.”
“I wanted the same thing and, you know what, I did it,” I said. “When I was 34 years old. It took me a while. You’re going to be able to do that, too.”
That day at practice our players were so tight we couldn’t pass, dribble, or catch. Finally, I stopped practice and told them, “Guys, we are good. We don’t need to be pressuring ourselves. We’re going to be fine.”
After that practice, I had a conversation with Reyshawn Terry and Wes Miller, a junior walk-on who had transferred from James Madison. I said, “Guys, this is when the young guys are going to really rely on your help. I need you to step up right now.”
In our next game, at Florida State, I put Wes in the starting lineup and he hit six three-pointers to lead our team with 18 points. David sparked us on a second-half comeback and Reyshawn hit two free throws with 23 seconds left to win the game by a point. We would go on to win 10 of our last 12 games in the conference.
In the game at home against Georgia Tech, we fell behind by 13 points at the half. I was furious. My team had less intensity in that game than in any game I’ve ever coached. We were playing like prima donnas waiting for Georgia Tech to fold. It was a total team breakdown.
During halftime I overturned the Gatorade tray and then I grabbed a trash can and threw it against the wall and garbage flew out all over some of the players. I went absolutely bananas. That was the first time that those freshmen had ever seen that side of me. Maybe it scared them because Tyler was great in the second half. We just kept throwing it to him in the post because they couldn’t stop him. He finished with 40 points, an ACC record for a freshman, and we won.
The next day was an off day, and one of our managers came by the office in a full sweat.
“You been getting a workout?” I asked.
He said, “No, I’ve been rebounding for Tyler. He’s just down there shooting like crazy.”
“Is he finished?” I said.
“No, he’s got another manager.”
I went to see Tyler and I said, “Big fella, don’t you think you can take a day off?”
He said, “Coach, I missed five free throws last night. I’ve got to work on that.”
I knew I was putting a big burden on Tyler’s shoulders with that team. But Tyler had carried that kind of weight with every team he had ever played on and he’d always responded well, and I didn’t have any other choice.
In the final game of the regular season, Tyler scored 27 points, including a three-point shot that turned out to be the dagger, and we beat No. 1 Duke on Senior Night in Cameron Indoor Stadium. Nobody thought we could handle J.J. Redick, who had set the ACC scoring record, but he missed 15 of his last 16 shots in his last home game, and we won 83–76. It was a great accomplishment and our guys acted that way in the locker room afterward, jumping around and screaming like little kids.
We wound up with a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament and we met George Mason in the second round. They had a lot of experienced guys and I had a lot of guys who had never been in the NCAA Tournament before. We were out of sync. We couldn’t make a shot. All of a sudden our guys realized that if we didn’t win the game our season was over, and the freshmen didn’t know how to handle that. They got nervous and we got beat.
I wasn’t upset with them. I had more fun coaching that team than any other team in my career, and in some ways I think that may have been my best coaching job. We won 23 games starting a football recruit, a walk-on, a guy who was only second-team All-State in high school, and two freshmen at the point guard and in the post. I think that team came as close to playing to its full potential as any team I have ever coached.
THE 2007 SEASON essentially started with what I call “the headband game.” We were getting dressed to play Gonzaga in the semifinals of the Preseason NIT, and a few of our guys put on headbands. It irritated me because they had just decided to do that on their own. I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t see quite as clearly before the game why it bothered me as I did during the game and afterward. Gonzaga beat us, and then I told our players, “By God, this is my team and this is the University of North Carolina and we don’t wear that crap. Take those damn headbands off and I don’t want to see them for the rest of your frickin’ college careers.” To me, the headbands made them look like individuals and we got beat that night by a better team.
With a significant boost from our freshman class of Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, Brandan Wright, and Deon Thompson, we won our next 12 games in a row and climbed to No. 1 in the country. Then we got fat and happy and lost a few games to Virginia Tech, N.C. State, and Maryland. In the last practice before a road trip to Georgia Tech, I didn’t like the attitude of my freshman point guard, Ty Lawson. Ty wasn’t hustling in the drills. He was just walking around. It was such a low level of effort that I didn’t have a choice. I had to do something. Finally, I told him, “Ty, get off the court. As a matter of fact, just go to the locker room. And if you want to leave, just go ahead and leave, because I don’t need you to go with me to Georgia Tech.”
At the end of practice, I told the other guys, “Fellas, if Ty’s on the bus that’s fine. If he’s not on the bus, that is all right with me.”
I really didn’t care. Some of my assistants cared and some of the players cared, and they talked Ty into coming to see me after practice.
I said, “Ty, you’ve got to make a decision. Do you want to be part of this team? Because I’m not going to allow you to just go through the motions.”
Ty showed up for the bus to the airport, and when we got to the arena in Atlanta I told him he would not start and he would not be the first substitute at point guard. I played him just 10 minutes and we lost. I think Ty and everybody else on our team got the message that I was willing to move on and coach our team without any single player, no matter how critical he might be.
In the final minute of our Senior Day game at the Smith Center against Duke, Gerald Henderson tried to knock the ball loose from Tyler, but Tyler’s nose got in the way. There was blood all over Tyler’s face, and we found out later that his
nose was broken. I do not believe that Gerald went in there with the intention of hitting Tyler. I think that he was very frustrated, and a lot of times in the heat of the competition, players do something they don’t intend to do. Gerald got ejected from the game, and I was dumbfounded by broadcaster Billy Packer’s response that Gerald shouldn’t have been thrown out. I was upset that some people, including Mike Krzyzewski, said that Gerald was the victim. Tyler was the guy who had his nose broken. That really bothered me, even though I knew Mike was trying to take care of his player.
And I didn’t like it in the press conference when it was suggested that we were ahead by so much at that point in the game that I should have already taken Tyler out. Duke’s starters were still in the game. The crazy thing is that I had a substitute for Tyler waiting at the scorer’s table before the free throw that led to all the commotion. If we hadn’t missed the stupid free throw, none of that would have ever happened.
I remember Tyler came back out on the court while we were having our senior speeches. His jersey was all bloody and he had cotton balls stuffed up both nostrils so he looked like this big goofy elephant with tusks sticking out. He said, “Coach, don’t I look great?” I had to laugh.
In the following days I was worried about how well Tyler was going to be able to play because he hated the facemask he was forced to wear to protect his nose. We won the ACC Tournament without Tyler being much of a factor. Freshman Brandan Wright led us in scoring in two of the games and won the tournament MVP.
In the second round of the NCAA Tournament, we were playing Michigan State and a few minutes into that game Tyler ripped the mask off because it was driving him crazy. He threw on his cape instead and played like Superman the rest of the game. Tyler scored 33 points and we beat Michigan State.
I remember the night before we played Georgetown in the round of eight, I woke up and looked over at the digital clock in my hotel room and it was 4:44 a.m. “That’s a sign,” I thought. “We’re going to the Final Four.”
That had been our goal all year long. We had a 10-point lead on Georgetown with seven minutes left in the game. We brought the ball down the court and Danny Green took one of the worst shots I have ever seen anybody take in a college game, a deep, deep three with no passes. I turned to my assistants and said, “What is he thinking?”
Georgetown then scored, and the next time we came down Reyshawn Terry took another quick outside shot and missed it. Then Georgetown went down and made a three-pointer, and all of a sudden our lead was down to five. Then we got tight and started shortarming our shots. We had the ball for a final shot with the game tied, and though Ty wasn’t as aggressive as I wanted him to be, we still got the ball to Wayne Ellington for a pretty good shot. Wayne had knocked down that shot many times, but it didn’t go in this time, so we went to overtime. In the overtime we panicked from the beginning and I could never get the guys to calm down. We got beat 96–84.
I felt terrible for our seniors, Reyshawn and Wes Miller, because both of them had come so far in their careers and I desperately wanted to get them to a Final Four.
Our locker room was one of the saddest locker rooms I could ever imagine. Most of the guys were crying and the ones who weren’t looked like they were in shock. The cruel part of the NCAA Tournament is the suddenness, the swiftness, the finality of your season, when you lose. Boom and it’s over.
I FIRST WENT to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983 when Coach Smith was inducted, and I sat there and thought it was really neat. Then Larry Brown was inducted in 2002 and I went again as part of the traveling party from Kansas. I remember one of the ushers said to me, “Coach, I hope one of these years you’ll be in here.” That was the first time I ever thought about it.
A couple of days later, I was talking to Coach Smith about Larry Brown’s ceremony and he said, “One of these days you’ll be in there.”
I remember one evening Wanda and I were talking about a letter that somebody had written me that mentioned how someday I’d be a Hall of Fame coach. “You know,” I told her, “I don’t think I’ll ever get there, but it would be a dream of mine.”
That’s all I ever said about it.
A few days after we won the national championship in 2005, I got a phone call from a friend of mine, Bill Frieder, who used to coach at Michigan. “Congratulations on winning the national championship,” Bill said. “There was never any doubt in my mind, but this solidifies it — you’re going to be a Hall of Famer.”
I still didn’t think too much about it. Then, at the end of a North Carolina practice in December 2006, I called everybody in and I was ready to give them some final thoughts from that practice, and Wes Miller said, “Coach, before we do that, we would like to be the first to congratulate you on becoming a finalist for the Hall of Fame.”
That was a neat moment.
I knew something about what being a Hall of Fame finalist meant because for two years while I was at Kansas I had been a voter on the Honors Committee. I knew there were 24 people around the country voting and you had to get 18 of their 24 votes to be inducted, and that was difficult to do. I knew Bobby Knight didn’t get in the first year he was nominated, so I put the whole issue on the back burner. I really didn’t think it would happen. Then one day during the 2007 NCAA Tournament, I received a notice from the Hall of Fame telling me when they would be calling to let me know if I’d been elected.
We lost that Georgetown game, and three days later, my assistant, Jennifer, came into my office to remind me that the Hall of Fame was going to call that day. I had forgotten all about it. I was still pissed off at the world because of how we had lost the Georgetown game. I told Jennifer that I wasn’t expecting good news and to close the door behind her on her way out because I didn’t want anybody else to hear the phone call. I hadn’t mentioned it to my staff because I didn’t think I would make it in.
That morning I took a couple of minutes to think about what I was going to say when the call came. I rehearsed it in my head a few times: “I’m fine. I hope to coach a lot longer and I’m just flattered to be nominated and I understand how hard it is to get in. So don’t worry about me.”
Then the phone rang. John Doleva, the president of the Hall of Fame, said, “Coach, I want to congratulate you. You’ve been elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.”
I paused for a few seconds and then said, “Uh … wow. John, I had my speech all ready for what I was going to say to you when you told me I didn’t make it. Very seldom in my life am I speechless. But I am speechless right now.”
As soon as I got off the phone I called Wanda. She was not nearly as surprised as I was. A few minutes later the curiosity was killing Jennifer, so she came in and asked me and I told her I’d gotten in and that the Hall of Fame had asked me not to tell anybody else until the announcement was made over the Final Four weekend. Wanda and I told the kids and that was it.
I remember feeling very flattered, but honestly, it didn’t take away the pain of the Georgetown game. That loss did not suddenly evaporate. At breakfast the next morning, I said to Wanda, “It’s great getting into the Hall of Fame, but I would trade it for one more basket against Georgetown.”
Wanda said, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. There are going to be other Georgetowns.”
I said, “Not for Reyshawn Terry.”
We flew to the Final Four in Atlanta and the announcement was scheduled to be on Sunday night. On Saturday night I had dinner with my current and former assistants, something I try to do every year to catch up with everybody. At the end of that dinner, we were all out on the sidewalk and I told the group, “Hey, I need you all to keep this quiet, but I wanted you to hear it from me. I’ve been elected to the Hall of Fame. I want you to know from the bottom of my heart that I wouldn’t be getting this honor if it wasn’t for all of you. Thank you.”
Then I called Coach Smith and Buddy Baldwin and told them both the same thing: “You are responsible for me being there.”
> That was in April and the ceremony was in September. I asked Jerod Haase, who I’d hired to be part of my staff at UNC, to handle requests from anybody who might call saying they wanted to come.
Twenty-two of my former players showed up. During a cocktail party before the ceremony, Wayne Simien walked up to me with this big grin on his face and we hugged, then separated for a moment, then bear-hugged again. Within two seconds I was so emotional I could barely speak because Wayne was one of the players I’d left behind at Kansas, the player who’d said, “I gave my right arm for that man.” I told Wayne, “Young man, you have no idea how much this means to me for you to be here. Thank you for coming.”
Wayne said, “Coach, I really wanted to be here. You’ll always be my coach. You’re like a second father to me.”
It was one of the most satisfying feelings I’d ever had, but it was mixed with a little bit of sadness because I knew I had hurt that kid.
My Hall of Fame speech was only the third speech I have ever prepared in my life. The other two were for Roberson High School graduations. The hardest part about delivering the speech was being able to get through it without breaking down, particularly when I talked about my family and my former players. I thanked every player and coach by name who had come there to support me and then I thanked Coach Smith and said I hoped he would see the night as a tribute to him.
Mickey Bell told me before the speech that he had a bet with Coach Smith that I would start crying. I said, “Mickey, I’ve always wanted to beat you at everything.” So I didn’t cry that night.
A few people asked me for autographs afterward and wanted me to include an “HOF” for Hall of Famer. I wouldn’t do it. I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea. I think part of me was still afraid that somebody was going to call me and tell me that they’d counted the votes wrong.