Final Four Pits Roy Williams Against His Friends

When UNC takes the floor in Houston on Saturday for its Final Four matchup with Syracuse, head coach Roy Williams will do his best to avoid looking at the opposing sideline—where his good friend Jim Boeheim will be coaching against him.

Why will he be doing that? Because this is just the latest in a series of emotional battles Williams has had matching up with those he’s closest to.

“I think it’s always difficult to play a friend,” Williams said at his press conference on Tuesday. “I’ve adopted something I sorta like—I try to never look at the other coach during the game. I just try to coach my team and not get involved in anything else.

“But at the end of the game, when you go to shake that guy’s hand—then all of a sudden it’s no game anymore,” he continued. “It’s you talking to an individual who in a lot of cases means a great deal to you.”

The last time Williams and Boeheim met on the big stage was in the 2003 National Championship game. Kansas, where Williams was coaching at the time, was playing a Syracuse team led by a freshman named Carmelo Anthony—now a nine-time NBA All-Star playing for the New York Knicks.

In that game, which Syracuse won 81-78, Anthony had 21 points to lead Boeheim to his first and only national title.

Williams was then asked by a reporter his thoughts on potentially taking the job in Chapel Hill.

Although North Carolina was the last thing on his mind at that moment, Williams ended up taking the job at UNC and won his first title two years later in 2005—quickly fulfilling a prediction Boeheim had made to him after that night in ‘03.

“I remember going down there [to the Syracuse locker room] and saying, ‘I’m very, very happy for you and sad for my team—but Jimmy I’m really happy for you,” Williams said. “He said, ‘You’re gonna get one soon.’

“But I don’t know that we’ve ever even talked about that exchange,” he added.

Although Williams won another title in 2009–doubling Boeheim in the championship category–it’s still just as difficult having to face off with him.

Saturday will mark the third time they’ve done it this season,  now that Syracuse is a member of the ACC.

However, it’s not just Boeheim that Williams has a hard time coaching against.

In recent years he has had to take on a pair of his former players—Jerod Haase, a Kansas alum who was also an assistant at UNC under Williams before moving on to head jobs at UAB and Stanford, and Wes Miller, the head man at UNC-Greensboro who graduated UNC in 2007.

“The worst for me was Jerod Haase when we played a couple years ago at UAB and they beat us,” Williams said. “You could see the look on his face and it was almost like he was sorry. I didn’t want him to feel that.”

While Haase struggled with the emotions of beating Williams—his mentor—so did Williams when he was in a similar situation back at the 1991 Final Four in Indianapolis.

Kansas was matched up with UNC and head coach Dean Smith in a National Semifinal that Williams’ Jayhawks won 79-73.

Then in just his third season as a head coach, Williams had just picked up the biggest victory of his career. It was overshadowed however, when Smith—known for his super cool demeanor—was tossed from the game for arguing with officials during the final minute.

“Coach Smith in ’91, for him to be ejected from the game, I didn’t think that was fair.,” Williams said. “I was really mad about that.

“Coach said, ‘You know I didn’t plan this.’

“And I said, ‘No Coach, I understand that. It just makes me mad that [you] would do something like that because it’s gonna take away from a great win for my team—and it did.'”

Obviously it’s well known that Smith and Williams each got over that incident and chalked it up as a bad day that was part of a much deeper friendship off-the-court. For Williams, those relationships–and his outings on the golf course–have always meant a great deal.

Because of that, don’t expect him to take too many peeks over at the opposing bench this weekend–no matter how far UNC goes.

Not only is he guaranteed to have to play against Boeheim, but if the Tar Heels advance to Monday night’s championship game he’ll have to face either Villanova’s Jay Wright or Oklahoma’s Lon Kruger—who he also considers to be friends.

“Jimmy Boeheim and I play a lot of golf together, been on the Board of Directors together—we were on a Coaches versus Cancer board together,” Williams said. “Lon Kruger and I play a lot of golf together. Lon comes and meets me at Pinehurst every year right before school starts and we play golf.

“Jay Wright, I got a note from Jay during the season—he and his wife have been awfully nice to me and Wanda.

“So I’m very fortunate I’ve got three guys I not only genuinely like, but have a great deal of respect for.”