Tar Heels’ Williams retires after 33-year Hall of Fame career
The last time Roy Williams left North Carolina, he was a virtually unknown assistant who was getting his first shot as a college head coach at tradition-rich Kansas.
Now Williams is leaving the Tar Heels again with a résumé chock full of honors — as a retiring Hall of Famer with more than 900 wins, three national championships and a legacy built on more than three decades of success at two of college basketball’s most storied programs.
The school announced the decision Thursday, some two weeks after the 70-year-old Williams closed his 18th season with the Tar Heels after a highly successful 15-year run with the Jayhawks. In all, Williams won 903 games in a career that included those three titles, all with the Tar Heels, in 2005, 2009 and 2017.
The Tar Heels lost to Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in his final game, his only firstround loss in 30 tournaments.
“It’s been a difficult year, but everybody’s had the problems with COVID that we’ve had,” an emotional Williams said after the game. “It’s been a hard year to push and pull, push and pull every other day to try to get something done. But how can you be any luckier than Roy Williams is coaching basketball?”
Williams thrived with lessons rooted in his time as an assistant to late mentor Dean Smith — he still respectfully refers to him as “Coach Smith” after all these years — even as he forged his own style. Williams always pushed for more — and typically he got it. His teams played fast, with Williams frantically waving his arms for them to push the ball. They attacked the boards with his preferred two-post style.
His time as an assistant coach included the Tar Heels’ run to the 1982 NCAA championship for Smith’s first title, a game that memorably featured a freshman named Michael Jordan making the go-ahead jumper late to beat Georgetown.
“Roy Williams is and always will be a Carolina basketball legend,” Jordan said in a statement through his business manager.