Kansas’ grudge is still with Williams
SAN ANTONIO -- Final Four weekend caps the end of Hell Week for North Carolina Coach Roy Williams, who tonight at the Alamodome finally faces up to Kansas in a NCAA national semifinal game.
Asking Williams to play Kansas is like asking a boxer to fight his estranged brother.
Thing is, the NCAA didn’t ask, as this nightmare was mandated at the point of a bracket bayonet.
It has been eight years since Williams turned down North Carolina the first time, telling a jubilant crowd at Memorial Stadium, “I’m staying!”
It has been five years since Kansas lost to Syracuse in the 2003 NCAA title game and CBS reporter Bonnie Bernstein asked Williams afterward whether he was going to leave for North Carolina, and Williams told her, “I don’t give a [bleep] about Carolina.”
And a week later that Williams, after going 418-101 in 15 years at Kansas, left for his alma mater, without saying goodbye.
Some have forgiven Williams for leaving, but it’s not a consensus.
“We boo every team we play,” lifelong Kansas fan Dennis O’Bryon said as he watched Kansas practice Friday at the Alamodome. “There will be a lot of booing. And some cheering. There are a lot of mixed feelings.”
Kim O’Bryon, Dennis’ wife, has worked for 20 years at the University of Kansas’ registrar office. She loved Williams as much as any resident of Lawrence, but there will be no confusing her allegiance.
“It would be great to beat North Carolina,” she said with a wry smile.
Her husband was not as discreet. “If you say you’re staying and you leave, that’s just lying,” Dennis said. “Don’t get our hopes up. You say you’re staying for the players, and then you get on a plane the next day and you go to Carolina. That’s what bugs me.”
Williams would rather people focus on the game and the players. North Carolina vs. Kansas is a high-pedigree pairing. The schools combined have 30 Final Four appearances and six national titles.
The game features stars such as Kansas junior guard Brandon Rush, who has fought back from knee surgery last year, and North Carolina junior forward Tyler Hansbrough, this year’s consensus national player of the year.
Yet, Williams v. Kansas has enveloped the action. The sign over the men’s restroom at a barbershop in Lawrence still reads “Roy’s Room,” with a sketch of Williams moved in 2003 to a position nearer the toilet.
If you don’t think this bothers Williams, you’re wrong.
“That doesn’t make you feel good,” he said. “Let’s be honest. If somebody puts your picture up over the commode, that doesn’t make you feel good.”
The first question Williams heard when he stepped off the bus in San Antonio was, “What about this Kansas thing?”
Williams responded with, “You’ve got to be more original than that. I’ve only answered that about 700 times.”
No one can say for sure what kind of reaction Williams will get tonight, but he says it can’t be worse than when, as a North Carolina assistant under Dean Smith, a Duke fan hit him with a grapefruit.
“They were throwing it at Coach Smith,” he said. “They were bad throwers.”
Tom Keegan, sports editor of the Lawrence Journal-World, said five years of separation have not been enough for some Kansas fans.
“A lot of people are still bitter,” Keegan said. “They took it so personally. . . . People blame Dean [Smith] for stealing Roy.”
Asked what kind of reaction Williams will get from Kansas fans, Keegan said, “I think they’ll boo him.”
Williams has no real connections to any present Kansas player other than backup guard Jeremy Case, who said he bumped into his old coach at a banquet Thursday night.
Case said Friday he was “disappointed” when Williams left Kansas but said “I have no hard feelings . . . it was five years ago.”
Maybe tonight’s mandated matchup will bring resolution to the saga.
“I think he should get over it,” former Kansas coach Larry Brown said of Williams.
And the fans?
“I think they should get over it,” Brown said. “Let the players go out and play and have fun.”
Of his time at Kansas, Williams said Friday, “I gave my heart, my body, my soul.”
But was that enough?
“Somebody said the other day that, you now, if Kansas wins, they’re going to forgive you,” Williams said. “Guys, I’d rather them not forgive me. That’s the bottom line.”
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North Carolina vs. Kansas
Final Four showdowns don’t get any bigger or better than this, as two of college basketball’s all-time titans meet in a national semifinal. North Carolina (36-2) is the top-seeded team in the tournament and is coached by Roy Williams, who spent 15 seasons at Kansas before taking the North Carolina job in 2004. A year later, North Carolina won the national title. This is the 13th Final Four appearance for Kansas (35-3) and third in the last seven years. Kansas won national titles in 1952 and 1988. North Carolina is making its 17th Final Four appearance. The Tar Heels have split in eight previous title-game appearances, winning national titles in 1957, 1982, 1993 and 2005.
-- Chris Dufresne
