Art’s Angle: Check Ol’ Roy’s Numbers

Roy Williams can be infuriating, I know, from his refusal to call timeouts and change some other stubborn habits (like defenses). He chastises fans for “jumping ship” when things are not going well even though he calls his own team out for not playing tough, smart or just plain good enough. He loses games he shouldn’t lose, but don’t all coaches? Dean Smith certainly did (look it up).

Indisputable about ol’ Roy, however, is that he has one of the best post-season records in the history of college basketball.

Roy Williams is 67-23 in NCAA Tournament play. (Photo by Todd Melet)

Williams is in his 26^th NCAA Tournament as a head coach and already has two more wins (67) than Smith notched in 27 tournaments (Footnote: In Smith’s first 13 years, only one team from each league could go to the NCAA playoffs, and in 1971 his Tar Heels missed but won the then prestigious NIT championship.)

Williams, in fact, is now second all-time among coaches, laps behind Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who reached his first tournament at Duke in 1984 and has won 30 NCAA games alone with his five national championships. Coach K is going after his 91st victory in Thursday night’s Sweet 16 game against Oregon.

Probably the most glaring comparison between the current Blue Blood coaches is that Williams holds the record of never having lost his first NCAA Tournament game (26 consecutive), while Krzyzewski has been “one and done” five times (1983, ’96, 2007, ’12 and ’14). Roy’s first eligible team at Kansas in 1990 won 30 games and was upset by UCLA in the second round. His second made the Final Four and upset Smith’s Tar Heels in the 1991 national semifinals.

Of Krzyzewski’s 41 seasons as a head coach (including five at Army where he began at 27 years old), Williams says, “My first head coaching job was at 38. I don’t know how those guys who started so early do it. I’d be in the grave by now.” Williams became a head coach 11 years later than Coach K and eight years later than Smith.

Duke fans claim – and UNC fans cringe at the thought – that Krzyzewski might have seven or eight NCAA titles if the Blue Devils of 1986, 1994, 1999 and 2004 had not lost, or blown, late leads at the Final Four. Williams definitely should have had a third (or what would have been his first at the time) when Kansas missed 18 of 30 free throws in an 81-78 loss to Syracuse in the 2003 championship game.

Williams is 67-23 in NCAA Tournament play, including 33-9 at Carolina and advanced to the Sweet 16 for the 17th time in 26 NCAA Tournament appearances, including eight times in 12 tourneys at UNC. Smith’s team made it to 21 Sweet 16s, including a record 13 straight from 1981 through ’93.

If you don’t like numbers you can understand, in some cockamamie metric that Sports Illustrated used in its NCAA Tournament issue, Williams rated with Krzyzewski and John Calipari as the best current head coaches. (Frankly, I was more concerned with the SI Jinx when I saw Brice Johnson on the cover.)

Given that all of his predecessors played fewer games per season, Williams has now won 30 games six times at Carolina (plus five more times at KU); Smith did it three times, Bill Guthridge and Frank McGuire once each. Williams is second in NCAA history with eleven 30-win seasons (guess who’s first with 14?).

As for overall total victories to date:

Krzyzewski, 1,043 (average of 25.4 in 41 seasons)
Smith, 879 (24.4 in 36 seasons)
Williams, 780 (27.8 average in 28 seasons)

Art’s Angle: Check Ol’ Roy’s Numbers

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