It was an hour after Kansas had defeated Oregon on Sunday to earn a trip to the Final Four. In the Jayhawks’ dressing room at Madison’s Kohl Center, guard Kirk Hinrich sat at his stall and talked about loyalty.
Specifically, Kansas coach Roy Williams’ loyalty.
In the summer of 2000, the University of North Carolina had asked Williams to become heir to Dean Smith’s kingdom. It had been assumed for years that Williams would walk to Chapel Hill the minute he was summoned. Outside Kansas, few people would have blamed him. Carolina is his alma mater. He had played there and later coached there under Smith. His roots in the fabled Carolina family tree run deep.
Williams agonized over the decision, but in the end he stayed put. And now the team he nearly walked away from had carried him to college basketball’s promised land–the Final Four.
“A lot of people questioned his decision,” Hinrich said. “We were just happy he showed so much confidence in us. Coach always talks about how the Final Four was one of the great moments of his life, and we’re happy to be able to give him another one.”
Twenty-one months after turning down what many thought was his dream job, the 51-year-old Williams is poised to live out a different dream: winning the national title.
Kansas, the top seed in the Midwest Regional, faces Maryland, No. 1 in the East, in the national semifinals Saturday at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. The winner will meet Oklahoma, the second seed in the West, or Indiana, the fifth seed in the South.
Williams’ Jayhawks are widely viewed as the strongest of the survivors.
And there’s the rub. If the Jayhawks don’t win their next two games, Williams will leave Atlanta without a national title. But he would still possess a mythical, unwanted title:
The best coach never to win it all.
It may not seem fair. But Mike Krzyzewski bore the same burden when he took Duke to four Final Fours without winning a championship. There used to be a joke about Coach K walking off the golf course after the 14th green.
Why? Because he couldn’t handle the final four holes.
Williams has been called a great recruiter who can’t X-and-O with his peers. Players trained in his offensive system, it is said, can’t adjust to unfamiliar defensive challenges in the tournament.
It’s picky criticism, to be sure. But it’s partly the price of hauling in piles of blue-chip recruits year after year, and partly the price of a gaudy .808 lifetime winning percentage (388-92), best among coaches with at least six years on the job.
“For as much criticism as he has taken, I don’t understand it because he has done an outstanding job with that program to have them at the level they are at right now,” said Oregon coach Ernie Kent. “They definitely have an opportunity to win this thing. I know I’m a coach who’s going to be rooting for Roy because he’s done it the right way.”
This is Williams’ third trip to the Final Four. Many elite coaches, such as Temple’s John Chaney and Purdue’s Gene Keady, have never been to one.
But the more trips a coach makes to the Final Four, the more pressure he feels to cut down the nets.
“The media, the fans, anybody keeps asking me that question: `Are you the best coach to never have won it?'” Williams said. “I try not to get too caught up in that. You know you’re human, just like everybody.”
Williams’ success has made him a millionaire many times over, and if he walked away tomorrow he’d be able to spend the rest of his life swatting golf balls and watching his yet-unborn grandchildren grow up.
But the one thing Williams wants, he can’t buy.
“I think this is thrilling for him to give him a chance to really get that thing he wants desperately, and that’s a national championship,” Kansas senior Jeff Boschee said.
But Maryland isn’t chopped liver. And Oklahoma and Indiana are perfectly capable of knocking off the Jayhawks in the final; in fact, the Sooners beat the Jayhawks on a neutral floor in the Big 12 tournament final March 10.
The odds will be stacked against every team in Atlanta this weekend. But Williams is the only coach who will be hounded if he doesn’t win twice.
“I know there are a lot of doubters out there, and I know you guys [in the media] give Coach a lot of heat for not reaching some goals that we haven’t reached in the past,” said forward Drew Gooden. “And I think it’s because coach Williams is a great coach. You look at all the great coaches in the past–Dean Smith, John Wooden–I don’t think they won their first championship [until] about 20 years into coaching. (It took Smith 21 years at North Carolina to win a national title and Wooden 16 at UCLA.)
“Stop giving him heat about reaching the Final Four or winning the championship,” Gooden said. “No matter what he does, he’s just a great coach.”
He’s also a changed coach.
One critical shift in Williams’ approach occurred after the 1996-97 season. The Jayhawks had perched atop the polls for most of the season, but they bombed out in the second round of the NCAA tournament against fourth-seeded Arizona. Williams recalled enduring something close to a mourning period that spring. It prompted him to reassess his priorities.
“The pain was too hard,” Williams said. “It made me sit back a little bit and look at things a little differently.
“There was no doubt that [winning a national title] was No. 1 in my mind, in my professional life, my coaching career. Sometimes I think it even got in the way of my personal life.
“Then I decided that my No. 1 goal was to live long enough to coach my grandchildren in Little League baseball and basketball. I still have that desire [to win a national title]. But I think it was almost unhealthy the way that I was looking at it at that point.”
Another change occurred during his flirtation with North Carolina two summers ago. As Williams thought about all the good things that would be waiting for him in Chapel Hill–he’s a native Tar Heel and regularly vacations on the Carolina seashore–he also thought about how many good things he had at Kansas.
Know the cliche about stopping to smell the roses? Change “roses” to “sunflowers” and you’ll understand Williams’ newfound appreciation for his life in Lawrence.
“I enjoy every day a lot more,” Williams said. “If you’re always looking at the end, you miss what’s going on.”
Williams fell back on that philosophy when junior forward Nick Collison approached him this season and suggested shortening practices. Williams listened, then restructured his regimen to keep his players fresh.
“We’ve backed off because of the idea that we want the kids to enjoy the journey,” Williams said.
That’s not to say Williams’ stomach doesn’t churn on the sideline. But the subtle change in attitude may have paid dividends this month. Kansas has had three sterling opportunities to fall apart in this tournament, and each time it has responded with grace.
“I think the kids are more relaxed than other teams,” Williams said. “There is always a sense of getting that from the coaching staff.”
The Jayhawks’ first challenge came against 16th-seeded Holy Cross, when Hinrich severely sprained an ankle. Two rounds later, against No. 4 Illinois, Hinrich and Collison were in foul trouble most of the game. The Illini had two shots to tie or win the game in the final minute, but KU hung on to win 73-69.
Then came Sunday’s regional final against the high-flying Ducks. For much of the game, Kansas asserted its superiority in the frontcourt. But when Oregon drew to within six points with eight minutes to play, it looked as if the Jayhawks were ready to go into one of their patented nose dives. Williams signaled for a timeout.
“I thought we were losing our composure,” Williams said. “I got on them a little bit about the mental mistakes, throwing the ball away and not sprinting back [on defense]. I think that’s the only time I’ve seen us lose focus in this tournament.”
Kansas responded to Williams’ lecture by outscoring the Ducks 29-17 the rest of the way.
After it ended, Williams climbed a ladder and snipped the net. It may have been a prelude to a similar ceremony late Monday evening in Atlanta. But if it isn’t, Williams said he won’t have any regrets about this season, or his career.
“I still desperately want to win it, but I don’t need to,” Williams said. “I’m going to enjoy my life either way.”
