CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — From his seat in front of the class, Roy Williams leaned back and looked up at Tyler Hansbrough, one North Carolina basketball legend to another on Tuesday, and informed his former big man that this next tale would serve to wrap up his time here as a guest lecturer.
More than two decades ago, Williams said beginning again, as a result of his haste in trying to make a recruiting visit on time, Williams was stopped for speeding in Missouri. And while the state trooper indeed recognized the famous college basketball coach, he didn’t let him off the hook.
“You shouldn’t have beat my Missouri Tigers so many times,” Williams said the trooper told him, handing over the speeding ticket with a reference to his then-recently concluded run at Kansas. At the time, Williams was early on in his tenure leading the Tar Heels.
“Well, let me tell you one thing,” Williams said in response, unable to fight the urge. “If we get this guy in Poplar Bluff, we’re going to beat everybody’s ass a whole lot more.”
And with that veritable mic drop, Williams stood to applause and waved goodbye with both arms extended Tuesday at UNC’s Carroll Hall, before departing this sports communications class — Media and Journalism 377 — that’s being taught by professor Livis Freeman and Hansbrough, a new adjunct professor in the department this semester.
The high school recruit Williams had been exceeding the speed limit to see all those years ago was, naturally, a teenage Hansbrough. And he, of course, went on to achieve a supremely decorated college playing career for Williams and the Tar Heels, earning NCAA champion and All-America status, while claiming the ACC’s all-time scoring crown along his bruising path. Carolina went 131-22 from 2005-09, with Hansbrough starring as the only four-time first-team All-America and All-ACC player in the conference’s long history.
On Tuesday here, the 75-year-old Williams went back to school and showed up to meet Hansbrough’s class, where he held court in a room packed with about 100 people. The message became quintessential Williams, he of the 33 seasons as a college head coach, 903 victories, nine Final Four appearances, three NCAA championships (all captured with the Tar Heels), and two UNC degrees (bachelor’s in 1972, master’s in 1973).
The stories were many, running the gamut from hilarious to reflective to emotional, across this question-and-answer session of 75 minutes — Ol’ Roy playing the hits one more dadgum time on this day, as only he can, during the course of his own fireside chat of sorts.
Williams said he embarked on the drive from Charleston, S.C., at 7 a.m. Tuesday morning to make the afternoon class at UNC. These college undergrads likely were in high school when Williams kissed the basketball court that bears his name at the Smith Center in March 2021, on his walk toward the tunnel after defeating Duke in what ultimately became his final home game. And an engaged audience awaited him here, the product of his life’s work in many ways, seated in front of him with rapt attention.
“I thought this place is bigger than New York City,” Williams said, recalling his journey from Roberson High School in Asheville, N.C., to college at UNC. “I came here and I looked around and I was the smallest little fish you ever did see. But what North Carolina allowed me to do is grow. It opened up the world to me. North Carolina, something grabs you. It gets you in your heart and your soul. And you will have that for the rest of your life.”
Williams suddenly found himself choking back tears there, while some other students in the classroom wiped at their eyes, too. Williams played freshman basketball for the Tar Heels during the 1968-69 season, before keeping statistics and taking practice notes under Dean Smith, his mentor, the very seedlings of his eventual Hall of Fame coaching career.
“This place put their arm around Roy Williams and made it feel like this place would be my other home,” he told the class. Standing tall at 6-foot-9, Hansbrough presided at the front of the room beside the seated Williams, setting up his former coach like point guard Ty Lawson often fed him down low around the basket.
In-state students from Charlotte and Winston-Salem and Morganton had questions for Williams, as did others from out-of-state places such as New Jersey and San Francisco. He called on a young man from Wilmington, N.C., who happened to grow up minutes away from Michael Jordan’s boyhood home, and later a young woman from Boone, N.C., whose mother has coached volleyball for 30 years and counts Williams as one of her preeminent inspirations. Here’s a sampling from some of the discussion during Tuesday’s class:
How did you first get involved with Carolina basketball?
Williams remembered playing to full houses with the UNC freshman team in the late 1960s. Bill Guthridge coached that group, and games were held on Friday nights, before Smith and the UNC varsity played on Saturdays.
Years later, Williams was working the Carolina basketball summer camp when Smith and Guthridge, his trusted lieutenant, were recruiting a point guard prospect from Rocky Mount, N.C., named Phil Ford. Smith and Guthridge asked Williams to station himself in the gyms where Ford would be playing during the camp.
“I refereed every one of his games,” Williams said Tuesday. “And every time Phil drove to the basket, I called a foul on the other guy. So that was my first contribution to North Carolina basketball. And I got a handwritten note from Coach Smith that I could probably find still today.”
You had over 1,100 games in your head-coach career. Looking back on the 900 wins and three national championships, what advice would you give on handling winning and losing?
Being on a team simply is the most wonderful thing, Williams said Tuesday. He said he lived for high-profile moments and high-pressure situations, and the thrill of Final Fours and NCAA championship games always created an ultimate prize to strive for at the end of a basketball season.
“I miss it every single day,” he said. “I miss the locker rooms, the bus rides, the shenanigans that go on. It was a great run, and I miss it every single day.”
On the other side of the rarefied heights and mountaintop accomplishments, Williams said he couldn’t always find the appropriate words for his teams in the aftermath of certain crushing losses. He recalled one of his famous stories about the piercing heartbreak of the 2016 national championship game, when Villanova’s Kris Jenkins drilled the title-clinching dagger at the final horn to deny the Tar Heels. Williams had his face buried in a towel afterward, when Jordan wrapped his arms around the coach amid the postgame sorrow.
“Sometimes I knew what to say,” Williams said Tuesday. “But that time I was totally inadequate.” So Williams asked Jordan to address the UNC team in the quiet of the locker room that night in Houston, and Jordan obliged with a message about how proud he was of the group. “And he told them to remember that feeling so that it drives them in the offseason,” Williams said, alluding to the Tar Heels’ redeeming ride to NCAA championship glory the following season.
Williams added that on the day he retired, April 1, 2021, Jordan called him. Williams told the class Tuesday that if, just say for example, a suitcase carrying $10 million was made available to him, but in order to receive the money his memory would have to be wiped so that he forgets what Jordan told him during that priceless phone call, well …
“I ain’t taking it,” Williams said. “The things he said to me that night were the greatest things ever.”
How badly did the team of Hansbrough and Williams whip Wes Miller and Bobby Frasor in golf recently?
This was posed by a grinning Hansbrough, who jokingly called it the most important question of the day.
“We beat them like a drum, boy,” Williams said delightedly.
Some estimates tossed around Tuesday had Hansbrough and Williams winning $250 off Miller and Frasor, the former UNC guards, during that particular golf outing.
