by Roy Williams
We had a little private party after the ceremony, and when it was over, Wanda and I went upstairs. “You know, this is still hard to believe,” I said.
I have to admit that the ceremony did scare me a little bit. I sort of felt like my life was about done because that was the biggest honor I could possibly get. I had to keep reminding myself, “Gosh, it’s not all over with. You get to keep coaching.”
SO AFTER THAT, I went right back to coaching, because that’s where the real joy is. I love playing road games. I love that atmosphere. I encourage my players to treat games away from home as a wonderful challenge. I like to tell my team, “Let’s go into their living room and steal their brownies.”
It’s all about having the confidence and attitude that I can beat your butt anytime, anywhere, anyplace, anyhow. Coach Smith once told me that on the road he thought his team should play a little slower tempo, play a little more zone, be a little more conservative. There are very few things that I have ever disagreed with him about, but this is one. I want to attack your rear end even more at your place. I’m going to show you that I don’t care how many people are in the stands screaming against us — we’re coming after you. We’ll shut them up. We’ll listen to them get quiet. I don’t know if there’s any better sound than at the end of a road game when you hear that silence.
Our 2008 team never lost a game on the road. We won games at Ohio State and Kentucky. We won by a point at Georgia Tech and Virginia. We trailed by seven with less than three minutes to play at Clemson and won the game in overtime on a three-pointer by Wayne Ellington with less than a second left. We beat Florida State in Tallahassee in overtime even after losing Ty Lawson to a sprained ankle early in the first half. We came back from 18 points down in the second half to win at Boston College, and we scored the last 10 points of the game to beat Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium on their Senior Night.
That’s a lot of brownies.
We did lose two games at home that season, but we made it to the Final Four brimming with confidence. Ty and Wayne were a dynamic combination in the backcourt all season and Tyler was on his way to winning the National Player of the Year award. I remember walking out to the court during the warm-ups before our semifinal game against Kansas, and I believed that we were going to play great.
We got the opening tip and on our first possession our guys did one of the things that we told them in the pregame they could not do. Wayne tried to dribble the ball casually through the seam between two perimeter defenders, and Kansas stole the ball and went right down the court to score. We had also said in the pregame that we’ve got to push the ball up the floor on every possession to attack their defense before they got set, but after Kansas scored, Ty walked the ball slowly up the court. The other thing we said that we could not do was have our big men bring the ball down low and take a careless dribble. On our second possession, Deon Thompson brought the ball down and Kansas stole it from him and went down and scored. Then we walked it up the court again. We got to the first television timeout and I said, “Guys, we fought so hard to get here. Let’s not tiptoe through the tulips. We’ve got to play.”
Apart from what was going on in the game, I felt sick. I was sweating. I just felt awful. I was yelling at them during timeouts, and then I’d stand back up and I’d get really dizzy and have to grab the chair to keep from falling down. At one point in the game I turned to Coach Robinson and told him to call a play, because I couldn’t. I could barely frickin’ stand up. Someone gave me a towel and I was throwing up into the towel during the first half, and the way we were playing was making me even sicker. The sweat was just rolling down my forehead as we were just getting killed. Darrell Arthur and Brandon Rush were scoring at will and Cole Aldrich was blocking a bunch of shots for them on the defensive end. Kansas made 12 of its first 16 shots and scored 18 points in a row. At one point we fell behind 40–12.
As we walked off the court at halftime, we’d cut their lead to 17. I was mad, but I still believed we were going to win the game. I remembered back to the 2003 NCAA final when my Kansas team had been down 18 in the first half against Syracuse and we came back to have a three-point shot to tie the game at the end. In the locker room I reminded the players about how we had been behind Boston College by 14 points at halftime that season and we’d come back to win. I told them I thought we could do it again.
We came back out and made a run. We took better shots, we took better care of the basketball, we attacked them more instead of reacting so much to what they were doing, and eventually we cut their lead down to five points with about eight minutes left. Then Danny Green shot a three-pointer from right in front of our bench that could have cut the lead to two, but it rattled around and popped back out. We never got closer than that. It felt like we were the Little Engine That Could, but we just couldn’t seem to climb to the top of the mountain. It wasn’t until there were two minutes left in the game that I finally thought to myself, “Gosh, we’re not going to be able to get this done.”
It was such a sinking feeling. It felt like somebody reached in and grabbed my heart and shook it in front of my face. It was one of the most miserable nights of my career.
After the game I was criticized for not calling more timeouts when we fell way behind in the first half, but there were six timeouts in that half, and after each one, when we would leave the huddle, our guys did exactly the opposite of what I’d just asked them to do. We were like punch-drunk boxers who couldn’t clear the cobwebs. In fact, after one timeout when we went out and made the same mistake I’d just been yelling about, I remember turning to one of my assistants and saying, “Boy, what good does it do us to have a timeout if they’re not going to listen to us?”
I didn’t sleep that night. That next morning, the first day that there’s no practice and no game, is a terrible day. I felt lost. I also still felt very sick. I never left the hotel room and I was in the bathroom all the time. I lost six pounds in two days.
I normally don’t go to the NCAA championship game if my team is not playing in it, but Scott and Kimmie had flown in for the Final Four, so I took them to the game on Monday night. I was pulling for Kansas. Two of my former players, Michael Lee and Brett Ballard, were now Kansas assistant coaches, and I wanted to support them. When we arrived at the arena we started down the steps to our seats and I saw another of my former Kansas players, Ryan Robertson, and he hugged me and said, “Coach, I’m glad Kansas is in the final, but I was pulling for you Saturday night.”
That meant a lot to me. I was talking to Ryan, and this guy with him — I don’t know who it was — gave me a Jayhawks sticker. Then Ryan said, “Coach, pull us through tonight.”
We found our seats and I took the backing off the sticker and put it on my shirt. I didn’t think anything about it. Next thing I knew, my picture was up on the video board. At halftime I did an interview with CBS, and they asked me about the sticker. I told them I didn’t think it was a big deal because I coached at Kansas for 15 years, so of course I was pulling for the Jayhawks.
I forgot about it, until the next day when there was such a fury over the sticker. I didn’t understand it at all. I just thought it was so unfair the way I was ripped. At the game, I was sitting in the North Carolina section with Wayne Ellington’s family and in the row behind me were eight alums from the University of North Carolina, but the next day all I heard about was how I was sitting in the Kansas section. One reporter wrote a story suggesting that part of the reason we lost to Kansas was because I had said that I never wanted to play against my former team. That was such a silly statement to make.
A few weeks later I was at a North Carolina booster club meeting in Greensboro and I was very aggressive, very abrasive about the whole issue. I said, “Before I take any questions, I want to tell you folks something. In 1993 I was coaching at Kansas and we lost to North Carolina in the NCAA semifinal and I stayed for the final to watch Coach Smith win his second NCAA title. I stood there in the stands waving a Carolina Blue pom-pom
all night. This year I was coaching North Carolina and we lost to Kansas in the semifinals and I stayed to cheer for Kansas in the final and wore a Kansas sticker. Why are people so mad about the sticker? What is the difference?”
When I finished, they gave me a standing ovation.
That Kansas game will eat at me for the rest of my career. Playing so poorly was bad enough, but playing so poorly against the team I coached for 15 years made it even worse. I wanted to win that game more than any game I have ever coached. I wish I could have figured out something else for our team to do, but looking back at it, I don’t know what I could have done. Watching us play felt like a nightmare. I still to this day have not watched a tape of that Kansas game, and I probably never will.
THE NEXT GAME we played included a new player. A 6'2" guard named Barack Obama.
At the end of April I was on the road recruiting and I got a call telling me that Senator Obama’s people had asked if he could play pickup with our team the morning after a campaign speech in the Smith Center. I thought it would be a great experience for my players.
At 6:45 a.m. the Secret Service cars pulled into the tunnel below the Smith Center and Senator Obama got out already dressed in his sweats and ready for a game. I gave him a quick tour of the arena and our locker room. He laughed with my staff about how he’d picked us to win in his NCAA Tournament pool and we’d let him down. We talked for a few more minutes, and I told him that I knew his former coach at Punahou School in Hawaii, Chris McLaughlin, because I had practiced my Kansas teams at that school during the Rainbow Classic. He was amused that we had that common ground.
We walked into our practice gym and our guys all had a chance to shake his hand, and then I asked them to pick teams. Senator Obama had more savvy than he did game, which I think is the right ratio for a president to have. He understood how to play the game, but he also had a little street in him. He could run the pick and roll. He could make a bounce pass off the dribble.
At one point he drove the ball to the basket right at Tyler. Our guys didn’t go too easy on him. I remember one of our walk-ons, Jack Wooten, blocked the senator’s shot and fouled him. Senator Obama told Jack, “Don’t worry. The Secret Service won’t do anything to you.”
Later in that game, I called Marcus Ginyard over and I said, “Son, you know, you have a presidential candidate on your team. You may want to pass him the ball.” After that, I think Marcus passed him the ball every time he touched it.
After the game, Senator Obama took a picture with all of us, and our guys told him how much they enjoyed the chance to play with him. Right after the workout, Marcus put up a sign in our locker room reminding everybody to register to vote.
A week later, I received a handwritten note from Senator Obama.
Coach Williams,
I wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I enjoyed my visit to the Dean Dome. You and your team could not have been more gracious hosts and having the chance to scrimmage with the team (even if I didn’t belong on the same court with them) was one of the highlights of the year. I was especially impressed with the attitudes and conduct of the young men you coach. It is testament to their character, their parents and the type of program you are running. Congratulations on all of your success and please pass on my regards to your team (as well as Happy Mother’s Day to your wife).
Sincerely, Barack Obama
I can count on one finger the number of thank-you notes I’ve gotten from people getting ready to be president of the United States.
He earned my vote because I liked the fact that he was enjoying the ride. I’m not somebody who thinks you have to be president every moment of your life. I liked that he was interested enough in college basketball to be a fan. I liked that he filled out his NCAA brackets and I thought it was pretty neat that he’d picked us to win.
I wondered if he would do it again.
CHAPTER 12
Stress Relief
IN OUR LOCKER ROOM after losing at Wake Forest on January 11, 2009, I did what I have always done. I drew from my past. I turned to Coach Robinson and said, “Coach, do you remember the 1991 season at Kansas?”
Coach Robinson’s eyes got real big because he didn’t know what I was doing, but he said, “Yes.”
“Do you remember how our Kansas team started out that ‘91 season in the conference?”
“Isn’t that the year we started out 0–2?”
“Exactly right, Coach. That’s very good. Do you remember how we finished in the conference that year?”
“We finished first.”
“Do you remember how we ended that season?”
“We played for the national championship.”
“That’s right. So, guys, we’ve been through this before. I’ve been through this before. Coach Robinson has been through this before. We’ve been 0–2 before and played for the national title. The season is not over. This is just a little bit of a challenge. So just follow along. Just do what we tell you to do and things will be fine. Guys, this game was extremely disappointing and we’ve got to play better, but my gosh we stunk it up and we still had a chance to win the dadgum game. This is just as much my fault as it is yours. I apologize and I’ve got to get better. But we’re going to be all right, you’ve got to trust that. You’ve got to believe that. Do you believe that?
“What were our goals? Was our goal to beat Wake Forest? No. Our goal is to win the regular season championship and then our goal is to win the national championship. We haven’t lost those opportunities. We can still reach our dreams.”
I got a sense from each player that they were thinking, “Okay, huh, I guess we are all right.”
Then I told them, “Let’s keep this conversation in our locker room. Let’s keep this to ourselves. But if you do what we ask you to do, I promise you we’ll have a chance to be there at the end.”
Pacing around the coaches’ locker room a few minutes earlier, I had remembered how I felt when my 1991 Kansas team lost to Oklahoma State to fall to 0–2 in the Big 8. I remembered how at our coaches’ meeting after that game I’d thrown a clipboard up against the wall in my hotel room in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and told my staff, “You guys get the hell out of here, I’ll figure it out myself.” But I also remembered how I’d decided that with the players I was going to be extremely positive and how well they’d reacted to that.
So that’s what I did with my North Carolina team. I was going to do everything I could to make sure that they didn’t fall off the cliff. Showing confidence in them was more important to that team than any team I have ever coached because of the high expectations they were facing. I didn’t want panic to be an option. I had to keep saying we were going to be fine.
A coach can sometimes manipulate what his players think. I think we all try to convince our teams of something that isn’t exactly right when we need to. But that night I believed everything I said and I wanted to help frame their opinion. Walking out of the arena that night, I said a little prayer to myself, “Lord, please let these kids realize that their dreams and goals are realistic. Amen.”
On the bus ride home I watched the game tape. It reinforced for me that we had played very poorly and made a lot of silly mistakes. It gave me hope because I thought our mistakes were easy to correct. I was ticked off, as I always am, about losing, ticked off that we didn’t show Wake Forest that we could stand up to them at their best. But I also felt pretty doggone good because I really didn’t feel that anybody else would make us play as badly as Wake did that night.
I knew we were a good team. Tyler and Ty and Wayne were our three stars and Danny Green had already hit some huge baskets for us that season after stepping in for the injured Marcus Ginyard.
Before practice the next day, I asked myself, “As a player, what would I be thinking?” I can sense when my team is expecting to get hammered by me and sometimes I will fulfill their expectations, but I think that resorting to screaming and yelling at them shows a lack of confidence, not only in them but i
n myself. How can I expect players to be as good as I want them to be if I’m not doing the best that I can? I treated that practice as “get better,” not “get even.” I sensed they were going to have a great practice and they did. They were very attentive to doing things the right way and they saw better results when they took better shots. We showed them two hours of tape from the Wake Forest game. I kept asking them, “Isn’t it easy to change that? All right, then let’s change it.”
As a coach, you always fear that if you tell your players what you expect to happen and the results are the opposite of what you said they’d be, you’ve lost credibility. I knew that if we laid an egg in our next game, I could lose some of their trust.
Fortunately, we won our next game at Virginia, but Wayne continued to struggle with his jump shot as he had all season. I knew I needed to figure out some way to help him get his confidence back. Before our next game, we shot videotape of Wayne’s jump shot from every angle to check on his form. We sat him in a chair in the free-throw lane and had him taking one-handed shots to work on getting full extension and follow-through without getting his opposite hand involved. I knew he was thinking too much, so I reminded him to try to lose himself in the game and then I remember saying, “Keep shooting. You just need to have one of those games when you hit three or four in a row and you’ll be fine.”
In our next game against Miami, Wayne missed both shots he tried in the first half and he didn’t score a single point. Then all of a sudden in the second half, he hit eight shots in a row. Seven of those were three-pointers. After the win, Wayne had this huge grin on his face and he told me he’d found his shot.
Two games later at Florida State, Tyler had his worst game of the season. He didn’t shoot well, he got in foul trouble, and his 55-game streak scoring in double figures was broken. The game was tied with three seconds to go. I called a play with Tyler inbounding the ball to the midcourt line. “What if that’s not open?” Tyler asked.