The Next Best Thing : When Kansas Made a Pitch for Smith, North Carolina Sent Williams Instead and May Live to Regret It

When Kansas basketball Coach Larry Brown fled after leading the Jayhawks to the 1988 NCAA title, Kansas Athletic Director Bob Frederick offered the job to North Carolina Coach Dean Smith, a former Kansas star.

“I can’t leave because they just named the building after me,” Smith told Frederick. “But I’ve got an assistant coach you should interview.”

Smith recommended Roy Williams, who served a 10-year apprenticeship at North Carolina, and Kansas signed Williams to a four-year contract. Because Williams wasn’t well known beyond Tobacco Road, Kansas boosters were upset that the Jayhawks hadn’t hired a big-name coach.

That didn’t last long. Last season Williams was voted the national coach of the year after leading Kansas to 30-5 record. Only one coach in NCAA history, North Carolina State’s Everett Case, has won more games in his first three seasons. Williams is 75-24. Case was 80-16 from 1947-49.

This season Kansas (26-7) has reached the Final Four and will play North Carolina (29-5) Saturday at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis. It will be the first meeting between teacher and student because Williams said he will never schedule a regular-season game against North Carolina.

“If I’m going to play (North Carolina), this is where I want it to be,” Williams said. “I’ve always said that I don’t want to play somebody that means that much to me. Coach Smith and (assistant coach) Bill Guthridge are almost like family to me.

“The only way I’ll play them is if we’re scheduled against them in the national tournament. I’m not comfortable with it by any means. But they’re not going to let us switch pairings because I’m not comfortable.”

Although Williams holds Smith in such high esteem that he refers to him as Coach Smith, Williams said his affection for Smith won’t affect his coaching.

“I won’t look at it any differently than any other game I’ve ever coached, and I sincerely mean that,” Williams said. “The most difficult thing is going to be the distraction it’s going to cause because of everybody asking questions about it. I’m going to have some torn feelings.

“Coach has meant so much to me,” Williams said. “I may not be the brightest guy in the world, but I know I wouldn’t be the head coach at Kansas if it wasn’t for Coach Smith.

“It will be special, but once the game starts. . . . If I were playing golf against Coach Smith, I’m not going to try to hit it in the woods on the first tee. We played together in the Crosby last spring, and we had a little contest going. I stepped up on the first tee and tried to hit it down the middle and he stepped up on the first tee and tried to hit it down the middle. That’s the way it’s going to be Saturday.”

Williams and Smith have rooted for one another in the NCAA tournament. Smith had anxious moments watching Kansas oust Arkansas and Indiana in the Southeast Regional.

“I was a nervous wreck watching the (Arkansas) game,” Smith said. “I was excited for Coach Williams and the KU program. That’s my old school. But mainly, I was excited for Roy.”

And Williams had similar feelings watching North Carolina hang on for a victory over Temple in the East Regional.

“I was nervous sitting there at the end because of my feeling for that school and the coaches,” Williams said. “I could tell I was definitely a fan or at least a sportswriter because I was trying to tell if the coach had made the right decisions.”

Smith and Williams, who recruited most of this North Carolina team, won’t have to bother exchanging game tapes because Williams installed Smith’s system at Kansas.

“I think (Kansas) runs Dean’s system better than he does,” Temple Coach John Chaney said.

Said Williams: “I take a lot of pride when people say that we look like North Carolina. But I’m not some boy wonder. It’s still the players that have to do it, and I’m not trying to act humble. I really believe that.

“Coach Smith has forgotten more basketball than I’ll ever know.”

Guard Doug Elstun, who played one season at North Carolina before transferring to Kansas because of his fondness for Williams, said Williams uses all of Smith’s drills in practice.

“Everything is the same from top to bottom,” Elstun said. “Even the pregame rituals are the same.”

But there’s apparently one major difference between Smith and Williams.

“Coach Williams is a perfectionist,” Elstun said. “We have all our drills scheduled out in practice, but we usually go over the time set aside for the each drill because Coach Williams wants to get it perfect.”

Williams has taken on other facets of Smith’s program and personality.

Like Smith, Williams is humble to a fault, always crediting players and downplaying his role. He doesn’t display his awards in his office, which is decorated instead with portraits of the six previous Kansas coaches and the Jayhawks’ two national championship teams.

Both coaches use the same motivational technique of positioning their teams as underdogs, no matter the quality of the opponent. When Kansas played Pitt in a second round of the NCAA tournament, Williams had his players believing they were underdogs, even though they were 2 1/2-point favorites.

Smith and Williams require players to wear suits and ties on the road. At a news conference before the Southeast Regional final, Kansas players wore ties. Arkansas players wore T-shirts and warmups.

Williams has adopted Smith’s calm demeanor during games. A tantrum for Williams is removing his jacket if he doesn’t like the officiating.

Because of Williams’ success, there has been speculation that he will succeed Smith, 60, when Smith retires.

Williams, however, knows the problems Gene Bartow had in following UCLA’s John Wooden, and he doesn’t think Smith is ready to step down after 30 years in Chapel Hill.

“I think Coach will coach another eight to 10 years because he loves what he’s doing,” Williams said. “He’ll coach as long as he enjoys it.”

A native of Asheville, N.C., Williams, 40, attended North Carolina. Although he set a school scoring record at Roberson High in Skyland, N.C., Williams wasn’t good enough to earn a scholarship and played on the Tar Heel freshman team in 1969.

But Williams, who decided in junior high that he wanted to pursue a coaching career, persisted. Durings breaks from his job in the intra-mural office, Williams attended Tar Heel practice sessions to study Smith’s coaching. He has saved the notes he took and still refers to them.

After earning a master’s degree in education in 1974, Williams was hired as the basketball coach at Owen High in Swannanoa, N.C., where he also coached the freshman football team, the golf team and served as athletic director.

He left after five years to become a part-time assistant at North Carolina in 1978. Williams coached the junior varsity, scouted and coached at Smith’s basketball camp. He also tutored Tar Heel centers and forwards and served as the shooting coach.

“The first couple of years I kept my mouth shut and listened and watched and tried not to embarrass myself by my lack of knowledge,” Williams said. “I’d been a high school coach for five years, and I didn’t think it was my spot to try to jump in and and coach All-Americans. But I grew every year.”

Although he worked full time, he received part-time wages of $2,700 a year in his first five years at North Carolina. Williams and his wife, Wanda, who previously had a combined income of $30,000, considered taking newspaper routes to supplement their income but scrapped the idea when Williams took a job delivering film of Smith’s TV show and that of football Coach Dick Crum to stations throughout the state.

“I had to find some other things to do if I wanted to eat,” Williams said. “So for 31 Sundays I would drive 504 miles, delivering the football and basketball coaches’ shows. If there is such a thing as a relaxing day for a college basketball coach it’s Sunday, and that was my toughest day. But it was a way to put money in my pocket.

“A lot of people thought I was stupid for going to North Carolina, but I always thought things were going to work out the right way.”

After paying his dues, Williams became a full-time assistant, responsible for recruiting. He was instrumental in signing Sam Perkins, now with the Lakers.

“The thing I remember most about Coach Williams is the man is a hustler,” Perkins said. “He’s determined to get the best out of anybody. He’s a disciplinarian-type coach. . . . You have to do it his way. Once you did that, he was not only a coach but a friend.”

The Tar Heels reached the NCAA tournament all 10 of the seasons that Williams was in Chapel Hill, winning the 1982 NCAA title.

Although he had head-coaching offers from other schools, Williams remained at North Carolina, patiently waiting for the right job to open. He rejected an offer from George Mason only three months before taking the Kansas job.

“I only went to one Final Four that our team wasn’t playing in because the biggest thing that went on at the Final Four was coaches standing around talking about who was getting fired and who was retiring and who was resigning and that didn’t appeal to me,” Williams said.

“I felt when the right job opened up for Roy Williams, it would be staring me in the face and would have my name written all over it. And luckily Kansas came along. I was 93rd on their list because the first 92 said no.”

The right job came along after Brown left Kansas to coach the San Antonio Spurs.

Williams said he was drawn to Kansas by the school’s basketball tradition. James Naismith, who invented the sport, was Kansas’ first basketball coach, and he was succeeded by the legendary F.C. (Phog) Allen. Wilt Chamberlain played at Kansas, and Smith played on the 1952 and 1953 Jayhawk Final Four teams that were coached by Allen.

“When you talk about success and tradition, Kansas is always mentioned at the top of the list,” Williams said. “Tradition helps, but it doesn’t help you play defense or rebound the basketball. I saw the move as an opportunity and a challenge.”

It became even more challenging four months after he was hired when Kansas received a three-year NCAA probation for recruiting violations under Brown and was unable to defend its NCAA title because of a one-year ban from the tournament.

Williams said he probably would not have accepted the job if he had known the severity of the penalty.

Williams had a 19-12 record in his first season, despite injuries to several key players and having only nine scholarship players. He was named rookie coach of the year by Basketball Times.

“It was difficult the first year,” Williams said. “The kids tell me they got a lot of strength from me, and I know I got a lot of strength from them. So I know it’s a two-way street.”

Last season, several magazines picked Kansas to finish last in the Big Eight Conference. The Jayhawks ended up being ranked first or second in the nation for 13 consecutive weeks before losing to UCLA in the second round of the NCAA tournament.

“Last year was a phenomenal year, and the kids felt a lot of pressure down at the end,” Williams said. “Losing to UCLA was the most disappointing game I’ve ever had.”

Although Williams feared that Kansas was due for a rebuilding season--four starters graduated--the Jayhawks won their second consecutive Big Eight title. After defeating New Orleans and Pittsburgh in the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, Kansas whipped Indiana by 18 points and overcame a 14-point first-half deficit in defeating Arkansas by 12 points.

Indiana’s Coach Bobby Knight, for one, was impressed.

“I hope I’m as good a coach as the guy that coaches Kansas,” Knight said. “I don’t really talk a . . . lot about coaches, but I’ll tell you one thing, he’s the kind of guy that if I had anything to do with him along the way, I’d sure be proud of him. He coaches really well.”

Knight, who rarely allows outsiders to attend an Indiana practice, let Williams watch an Indiana practice earlier this season and they met privately afterward.

Knight also admires Williams’ work ethic.

A tireless worker who took just one day off, Christmas, in his first season and two days this season, Christmas Eve and Christmas, Williams never misses a chance to recruit.

After using frequent-flier miles to take his family to Hawaii for a rare vacation last summer, Williams sent 51 post cards to recruits.

“I lied and told my wife I was going running and then I went and wrote postcards and made calls to recruits and ran for 15 minutes,” Williams said.

In an effort to impress recruits at Kansas’ first practice at midnight on Oct. 15, Williams danced to M.C. Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This,” before 13,000 fans who jammed Allen Field House for the event, which was billed as “Late Night With Roy Williams.”

It wasn’t how he danced, which wasn’t very well, it was that he danced at all.

“I hope (the visiting recruits) feel like I got up and danced in front of 13,000 people just for them,” Williams said.

Williams hopes to dance again at the Hoosier Dome if the Jayhawks win the NCAA title.