ST. LOUIS
Ol' Roy needs to win it all this time.
That's what the entire basketball world seems to think. It is not, as everyone knows, what Ol' Roy thinks. Ol' Roy just wants to coach his grandchildren someday.
North Carolina coach Roy Williams is still searching for his first championship.
(Lucy Nicholson - Reuters)
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Dean Smith once said he would not feel incomplete as a basketball coach if he never won a national championship. Mike Krzyzewski once claimed there was no Final Four monkey on his back. Jim Boeheim once insisted that results in March were overrated.
And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime.
They all know just how Roy Williams is feeling right now, one step from the national championship (again) after North Carolina's resounding 87-71 defeat of Michigan State on Saturday night. It took Smith seven trips to the Final Four before he finally won one. Krzyzewski won on his fifth attempt. Boeheim managed it on his third try, but, as he points out, "We had a lot of years when people thought we should have been in the Final Four and we didn't go."
This is the curse of the ultra-successful college basketball coach. They are put on pedestals for taking teams to Final Four, then blown off that pedestal if they don't win one quickly. Ol' Roy took Kansas to four Final Fours in 14 seasons there. Twice, he reached the championship game. The second time, his team came from way down in the second half against Syracuse and came up one shot shy of what would have been a stunning comeback victory.
Ol' Roy wept after that one (of course). Then he left for North Carolina, his alma mater, after saying three years earlier he planned to finish his career at Kansas. They still take his name in vain in Kansas for leaving them with no national titles and a trail of tears. Now, he is revered in his home state for restoring the Tar Heels to glory by reaching this Final Four, but the resurrection won't be complete until Ol' Roy cuts down a net that doesn't commemorate a regular season title or even a region final. Ol' Roy has plenty of conference championship nets. He's got five nets from regionals now. He needs that last net.
"You can't know how big a deal it is until you do it," Boeheim said, on the morning he learned that he had been voted into the basketball Hall of Fame. "I think I was just like Roy is, and I'm sure Mike and Dean and others were the same way. You say you want to win it, but it's okay if you don't. But the trip from zero titles to one title is the longest one you'll ever make in your life. From one to two is a few yards. From none to one is miles and miles. When you win it, then you find out how much it means to you."
Ol' Roy deserves to win this time. There are certainly those who don't want to see him win, if only so they can see him weep one more time. What they don't understand is that he'll cry just as much -- perhaps more -- when he does win. That's just who he is. When Smith finally won his first national championship in the Superdome in 1982, he was dry-eyed. So was Bill Guthridge, his top assistant and close friend. Not Ol' Roy. He stood on the court and cried because he was so happy for Coach Smith.
It is entirely possible that if Carolina wins Monday night, Smith will cry because he will be happier for Williams than he was for himself. Standing outside a restaurant Friday night, Smith shook his head and said: "I just wish people would stop saying we have the most talented team. I really don't think we do."
Of course he doesn't. Lefty Driesell once said that Smith was the only coach in history to win more than 800 games and be the underdog in every one of them. Ol' Roy isn't quite that way. He knows he has four likely NBA lottery picks on this team.
It's funny that people give Ol' Roy such a tough time about his "aw, shucks, I'm just a country boy" approach. The fact is he is just a country boy. He's just a country boy who happens to be a damn good basketball coach. Okay, maybe the tendency to talk about himself in the third person is a bit much, but he really doesn't mean it to sound the way it does.
Williams is as thoroughly decent and as honorable a man as there is in coaching. He was hurt when fans in Kansas began to wonder if Ol' Roy might be losing it when the Jayhawks lost in (gasp!) the second round of the NCAA tournament in 2000 and 2001. He was crushed when he became persona non grata among many in the Carolina basketball family after turning down the job in July 2000 after Guthridge retired. And he is still wounded that some folks back in Kansas won't even speak his name anymore.
Many of them claim that what upset them so much was that he said he was staying forever and then changed his mind. Guess what? People have the right to change their minds, and anyone who knows anything about Williams's relationship with Smith knows that turning him down once was the toughest thing Ol' Roy ever did. Turning him down twice proved to be impossible.
One longtime Kansas fan who never had a problem with Ol' Roy leaving was Tom Watson, the great golfer, who consulted with Williams on the art of coaching before he captained the U.S. Ryder Cup team in 1993. "You're allowed to follow your dreams," Watson said. "He did a great coaching job at Kansas. People should be grateful for that."
They're not. They're still bitter. Here's a simple fact of life in sports: If he hadn't been such a good coach, they wouldn't have been that upset about his departure. He won more games in 14 years at Kansas than any coach has ever won in his first 14 seasons as a Division I coach. He has continued that pace at Carolina. But he still doesn't have that last net. There is an old saying in college coaching: You don't have to be a great coach to win a national championship; but to be a great coach you must win at least one.
That's where Ol' Roy is right now. His team roared back after a sloppy first half Saturday to outscore Michigan State 54-33 in the second 20 minutes. That's how talented this team is when it gets rolling. Ol' Roy is right on the doorstep of true greatness as a coach. He's only 54, and he plans on coaching for a good long time. But, even though he will never admit it, he's tired of waiting. He has coached too well for too long to still have to answer questions about his coaching. He's already a lock for the Hall of Fame. But he won't feel complete giving that induction speech a few years from now without the exclamation point of a national championship at the end of his résumé. Monday should be his night. It certainly won't be easy, and he knows it.
But the time has come for Ol' Roy. He needs to cut down that last net.
Then he can start worrying about coaching his grandchildren.
