If looks could kill, then Roy Williams, the basketball coach for the national champion North Carolina Tar Heels, would have bagged himself a sports reporter during the stretch run to his team’s title game on Monday night against Gonzaga.
At least Ol’ Roy would have apologized.
The reporter suggested that what Williams calls “all that stuff” might have actually benefited UNC’s basketball program by forcing a shift in recruiting strategy, away from McDonald all-Americans, those who care more about the name on the back of the jersey than the front, and toward the next tier of players, those who take years to fully develop their skills, time spent becoming part of a basketball team while also earning a degree.
Although Roy is quick to say he’s sorry, he won’t apologize for the NCAA investigation that is approaching its 7th birthday at UNC, and has yet to lay a glove on Williams or his program, despite efforts by opposing coaches to pin it on Roy. To acknowledge an assist, those coaches should point a finger at a major Raleigh newspaper that long ago launched a crusade to take down the basketball program at the UNC system’s flagship university and has never allowed the truth to reroute that effort.
Williams would not dare insult any of his “kids,” but if someone spiked his Coca-Cola with truth serum, we are sure he would admit that the 2017 championship was the favorite of his three, doing so with, you guessed it, an apology to the 2005 and 2009 title teams. That’s because this year’s team overcame the heartbreak of last year’s championship game disappointment, when Villanova won on a last-second shot, sending the Tar Heels on a one-year journey for redemption that demanded a lot of work and an equal amount of sweat that was rewarded on Monday.
Williams also had to win with less talent than basketball factories such as Kentucky and Duke, which are transparent in their willingness to bring top players to campus only to play basketball. For those keeping score, UNC’s last one-and-doner was a decade ago, which is about the time Williams told his players that none would major in African-American Studies.
UNC’s championship team is flush with juniors and seniors who will graduate, as was Gonzaga’s and, last year, Villanova’s. While Duke and Kentucky rotate each year with landing the Nos. 1 and 2 recruiting classes, they have combined for just two championships in seven years, so maybe the template for success is changing.
If so, that would be good for college basketball, whose popularity is strained each time a freshman announces moments after his team’s final game that he is cashing in.
It wasn’t for a photo opportunity that UNC’s Luke Maye, 12 hours after he made a game-winning basket to keep UNC’s title hopes alive while ending Kentucky’s, was in a lecture hall at 8:03 a.m. 730 miles way. It was because, as his professor told the world, Maye is always in that business class. This day it just happened to be memorialized and shared on social media.
UNC players go to class because if they don’t, there would be a penalty to pay, and it would last more than a single game.
Williams, with this title, has ended any conversation about where he belongs on the all-time list of the greatest college basketball coaches — and it’s near the top. Since 2000, he has 12 more NCAA tournament wins than any coach, three NCAA crowns, which is tied for the most, and thousands of unused timeouts. He has also done this while being a genuinely gracious guy who speaks well of friends and foe, watches his mouth, and doesn’t spend the game berating officials.
It’s almost sacrilegious to say, but his record is better than that of his mentor, Dean Smith. Roy would apologize for that as well.
For half that time, Williams has labored under the weight of “all that stuff,” with those who are either uninformed or misinformed using an academic failure to sully Williams and his UNC program and proclaim them to be what is wrong with college athletics.
In truth, Williams and his UNC program are exactly what is right with college athletics. They should be celebrated not only by UNC fans, but those who love college basketball.
