Hall of Fame Coach Talks Retirement, Hubert Davis, His Parents, Grandchildren, Players, Technology, 10-Cent Coca-Colas, Wild Triglycerides, Much More

By David Glenn

Roy Williams recently served as a guest speaker for the sports media class I teach at UNC Wilmington. He seemed relaxed and happy, and he laughed and smiled (he joined via Zoom) a lot. He was serious at times, including when discussing his recent retirement, but mostly playful. He became emotional while talking about his mother and childhood.

As usual, he gave great answers to thoughtful questions, and he somehow turned lesser questions into valuable opportunities for teaching/learning, too. He patiently revisited many old stories, while adding a few unexpected twists, and he told some new stories, too. All the while, he responded to each student by name, often answering as if his or her question (many of which he had answered many times) was his only concern in the world at the time.

This is Part One of a multi-part summary of Williams’ visit to UNCW’s COM 495 class, including an extended introduction in which the coach offered some opening comments, before turning the class over to an hour-long Q&A led by the students.

On life as a retiree: I stopped coaching on April Fools’ Day. I didn’t realize it was April Fools’ Day until the day before. That was the only time I wavered and said maybe I should just change my mind and play a trick on the media and say, aw, I was just kidding (about retirement). But I really thought it was the right thing for me to do.

I am missing coaching, I don’t want to say desperately, I ought to say a heck of a lot. I really do. I miss being in the locker room, I miss the bus, I miss practice, I miss being with the kids.

But I made the right decision, for the right reasons. Everybody tries to put more into it, but the bottom line is, I didn’t think I was doing it as well as I had done it in the past, and I couldn’t handle that. I knew I never wanted to cheat the kids or cheat my school. So that was the reason. I am missing it a great deal, but I do feel very good about my decision.

I feel it was by far the right decision, 100 percent. I’ve been to six Little League games, four flag football games, four dance recitals. There was a Saturday, when Carolina was playing a home game in football, I saw a game that morning at 9 o’clock in Charlotte. It was sixth grade, my 11-year-old grandson, sixth-grade tackle football, which I never even knew they did in the sixth grade.

So I’ve had a lot of things that I’ve done. I’ve kept busy. I’ve probably been running around at this time of year more than I ever have, because I would never take anything in September, because it was recruiting, and then practice started in October, and then of course the season starts.

On the foundation of his relationship with the media: When I first got to Kansas, 33 years ago, as a head coach, they wanted me to meet with the media on a personal kind of thing after the press conference. I told them, “I will try to help you do your job as long as you don’t detain me from doing mine,” and that was basically the kind of relationship I tried to have the whole time.

On his restaurant of choice near UNC Wilmington: “Jerry’s.” (That means Jerry’s Food, Wine and Spirits, on Wrightsville Avenue, just on the western side of the bridge from Wilmington to Wrightsville Beach.)

On the ground rules for his Zoom visit to my COM 495 sports media class at UNC Wilmington: David, you know I can’t do this (technology). I am not touching anything on this computer. It’s not even my computer. I had to have someone else (UNC men’s basketball director of operations Eric Hoots) set this up for me on his computer.

I think we’ll get the most out of this if we allow the kids to ask any questions they want. And, guys, I’m 71 years old. I don’t care how young you are or old you are, I can still call you “kids.”

Twenty-something years ago, I had a computer. My son and daughter were in school in Chapel Hill. Every morning I would go in and press the little button, and it would say, (mimics computer voice) “You’ve got mail.” So it went for five days, and then the sixth day I hit the little button, and it said, “You’ve got mail,” and it was 208 (emails). The next day, it was 218. The university had put out the email addresses.

So I stopped right at that time. I’ve never done an email or anything whatsoever with a computer since that time, because I knew I wasn’t going to allow that computer to ruin my life. So I’m not going to touch anything on this computer. David, you go ahead and call on your students, and we’ll go from there.

UNCW Student Question: After coaching and mentoring so many great athletes, can you pinpoint a couple who still stand out to you and tell us why?

Williams: That’s a great question. You phrased it differently, but it’s sort of like someone asking a parent, “What’s your favorite child?” And, you know you can’t, or I can’t, answer that. Favorite grandchild, either. I do tease my son and say my favorite child was my daughter and not him.

You look at players, and for me I tried to be a coach, and it came out just as much that I was a teacher, and it came out just as much that, I hope, that I could be another parental figure. I’ve had so many of my players say that I was like a second father to them, and that was the nicest thing that anybody could ever say to me.

But the players that stand out, more answer than you need, but camp. You have 800 kids at (basketball) camp. You remember the really good players, and you remember the kids who were little jerks. (Laughs.) So when somebody asks about the relationships or the kids that stand out…

Basketball-wise, Tyler Hansbrough. Tyler Hansbrough came here and every day tried to be the best that he could possibly be in every situation. In the parking lot one morning, I’m going back out, I had left something in my car, and I go back out and (Hansbrough) is walking in, and he’s got a milk jug, a gallon milk jug. And I’m looking at it, and I said, “what you got there?” because it wasn’t milk, it was clear. And he said, “they told me to drink a gallon of water a day.” So he was carrying it with him to class! The trainers, the strength and conditioning coaches, had told him to do that. That’s on one end, there, that every day he did everything that he could possibly do to be the best player he could be and to help our team be the best team that we could be.

We, on the other hand, had Marcus Paige, who was just an incredible student-athlete. He was first-team Academic All-American, he was the ACC Academic Player of the Year. So he had such a bigger and different look, but when he stepped across the line there was nothing as important as basketball was to him.

So, when I’m thinking in my mind about your question, the elite guys are the ones that come out. Thankfully, I didn’t have many of those other guys (jerks) that irritated you all the time.

Marvin Williams, who was on our ’05 national championship team, was the most appreciative young man I ever coached. Sean May, who played the center spot, was one of the five smartest players I ever coached; he could’ve played any of the five positions on the court at any time. Those guys who were really successful basketball-wise were also the ones that were the easiest to coach, so maybe that had something to do with it, too. They had the same focus and the same hunger that I did.

We had somebody like Cole Anthony, who was only here for a year, who was only healthy for nine games, had something like, whatever this means, 800,000 (social media) followers. Yet, when he stepped across that line, it was just about winning for him, too.

So I can list a bunch of those, but those guys come to mind immediately. In recruiting, I looked for those guys who were going to be focused.

(The next Zoom question was asked by a student whose first name is Richard but who goes by “Trey.” When Coach Williams saw the name Richard on his screen, but heard me call on “Trey,” he asked for an explanation, then laughed and said: “I was going to get all over David if he didn’t know your name!”)

UNCW Student Question: What were your emotions as you handed the reins to Hubert Davis?

Williams: Two years ago (during UNC’s 14-19 season, Williams’ only losing record in 33 years as a Division I head coach), I thought I made a couple mistakes in games that hurt us, and I can never remember anything as big as those two plays, one against Clemson and one against Duke. Then, last year (during an 18-11 campaign), I just didn’t feel like I got the guys to buy in 100 percent, and I mean 100, like most of my teams had. And that was the reason that I stopped.

I don’t think I would have stopped if I hadn’t felt that I would be able to talk Hubert into taking it, or if I wasn’t going to be able to put enough pressure on our athletic director (Bubba Cunningham) and chancellor (Kevin Guskiewicz) to get them to give Hubert the job, because I just think he’s perfect for it.

He’s the nicest person I’ve ever known in my life who is also unbelievably competitive, and to me that’s a wonderful mix. I’m not the nicest guy, but I do believe that anybody that’s more competitive than me, that’s a very, very short list, because I’ve never met that person. But Hubert really is (the combination).

He loves the university just like Roy Williams does. If you cut us, yeah, we’re gonna bleed red, but we’re gonna look, because we think it’s gonna come out Carolina blue when you cut us. So that was extremely important to me, for him to make me feel like he would love to have the job.

UNCW Student Question: If you look back through your life and career, even to when you were our (college) age, is there anything specific that you would do differently?

Williams: Wow. I can really say I’ve been very pleased. That’s not to say I haven’t made mistakes (laughs) ‘cause, gracious knows, I’ve made millions of those.

My ninth-grade year in high school, after basketball was over with, the old story is that my high school coach on the varsity level (Buddy Baldwin) made me feel really good, that he thought I was really gonna be a really good player for him. At that time, it was the first person that had ever given me confidence, and it’s the first time I had ever heard anybody brag on me in my entire life.

You know, we didn’t have education talked (about) in my home (as a child). It was a fairly significant, different attitude than what there is in my home now, with my children or grandchildren. My high school coach was that important to me. So the summer after my ninth-grade year, I decided I wanted to be a coach, and I specifically wanted to be a basketball coach.

So I had it easier than a lot of guys did. I didn’t get started on one path and choose, because it wasn’t working, to go to another path. I’ve been really comfortable. I married the girl that, I wanted her to be the parent of my children, and we’ve been together for 48 years. She’s not sitting here. If she was, I’d be teasing her, saying how lucky SHE was. (Laughs.)

The fact of the matter is, it’s how lucky I am. I had two great kids, four grandchildren, went to school at North Carolina, became a coach. Sitting in my office now, I’ve got a Coca-Cola machine with my picture on it. (Laughs.) So life’s pretty good to Roy Williams.

I think the only thing I would change is, I would have tried to be more focused when I was a player. At that time, I didn’t know anything about the weight room, I didn’t have access to a gym or anything to be a better athlete. But other than that, really, knock on wood (taps his head with his fist and smiles), I’m really comfortable with the decisions I’ve made along the line.

I never made a decision for money. When I made a decision, every time during my adult career, it was just about what my heart wanted me to do.

UNCW Student Question: There’s a famous story about you drinking water as a child, while your friends were drinking Coke, until one day your mother left you 10 cents on the kitchen table. Can you elaborate on this story and describe the impact your mother had on you growing up?

Williams: Thank you. It is a well-known story, but that doesn’t mean everybody should know that much about Roy Williams, because there’s a lot more important things.

My mom and dad split, the first time, when I was nine or 10, and they got back together, split, got back together, split. So after my age of 10, my dad was never in the home. He was an alcoholic, ended up being married five times, my mom was his first, and he was a good man. I enjoyed being with him when he wasn’t drinking, but the problem was, there weren’t many opportunities when he wasn’t.

So I’m in the seventh grade, and the two elementary schools had just consolidated. From Biltmore High School and Valley Springs High School, they went into T.C. Roberson (High School). So they still had Biltmore Elementary School. The older students from the Biltmore area would catch the bus at Biltmore and go to Roberson, and my sister was on that bus when I was in the seventh and the eighth grade. Then she graduated, and I was riding the bus to Roberson.

It was strange because, every day, we would stay and play on the asphalt (basketball) courts. When the buses left, we had about 30 minutes we could play, before the buses got back. So we would leave when the buses came back, and we’d stop at the filling station — that’s what we called it in those days — across the street, and everybody would get a Coke. My sister was on that last bus that would come in, and she saw me sitting on the curb at the filling station a couple of days.

Just out of casual conversation, she asked one morning, “What do you guys do?” And I said, “Well, we play until the buses start coming back, when we gotta get off the asphalt, and then we go down to Ed’s.” That was the name of the filling station owner. And I told her that everybody sits there and has a Coke. That’s when my mom said, “Well, what do you do?” And I said, “Well, I just get some water.” And it wasn’t a big deal with me. It really wasn’t.

The next morning — and this is 100 years ago, it seems like, but it’s still a little bit emotional — the next morning there was a dime on the table, because my mom got up and left and went to work before I went to school. So the rest of my time in the seventh and eighth grade, every morning there was a dime laying on the kitchen table. I had told mom, I said, “I don’t need that. I can drink water. That doesn’t bother me or anything.” She said, “It bothers me. I want you to feel like you have the opportunities the other kids have.”

Again, we never talked education, because my mom quit school in the 10th grade, and my dad quit school in the sixth grade. But it was just, in the mountains, country boy, this Redneck Riviera kind of thing, but (the dime story) was something very meaningful to me.

I did make the statement to my high school coach a couple years later, “One of these days, I’m gonna be able to afford all the Coca-Colas I want.” Later on, I got lucky, and ended up coaching at the University of Kansas, and my high school coach came out to see us play, and I said, “Come out here a minute. I want you to go out to the garage.” And we walked out to the garage. We had a freezer out there, which most people do, that kind of thing, and we also had an extra refrigerator. So we opened it up and looked in, and there was nothing in there except Coca-Colas. I said, “I told you I was gonna do this.”

Several years later, they sent me to the Mayo Clinic because I started having some blackout spells, even during the game. The doctors, I don’t know if they were worried, but they were concerned enough to send me to the Mayo Clinic.

They decided, after doing all the tests, that my triglycerides, which is sugar content, this is supposed to be below 150. You guys are young, but if you ever start going to doctors, and they tell you to complete a chart, when the doctor points his finger and starts going down your chart, if he stops at a number and says “Oooh,” that’s not a good sign. (Laughs.) So it said my triglycerides were 455. Again, it’s supposed to be below 150.

So the doctor went down this list (of possible contributing factors) and said, “Soft drinks?” I said, “eight to 10 a day, for 30 years.” (Laughs.) And he went down a little farther, and he went “oooh” again. “Desserts?” I had put down twice a day for 30 years.

At that time, I really did this, the next day I stopped drinking Coca-Cola Classic. I tried Diet Coke, and it was yucky. So my wife said, “Let’s try this Diet Sprite,” so I’ve been drinking Diet Sprite since then. I’ll have a Coke every other month or so, something like that.

But, yeah, that’s the story. My mom, she just didn’t want me to feel like I was different. She wanted me to be able to feel comfortable. Again, I was fine with it anyway, but, and that was the neat thing, it was important to my mom.

Next Time: Roy Williams Goes To College, Part Two

(featured image by Todd Melet) 

David Glenn (DavidGlennShow.com, @DavidGlennShow) is an award-winning author, broadcaster, editor, entrepreneur, publisher, speaker, writer and university lecturer (now at UNC Wilmington) who has covered sports in North Carolina since 1987.

The founding editor and long-time owner of the ACC Sports Journal and ACCSports.com, he also has contributed to the Durham Herald-Sun, ESPN Radio, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Raycom Sports, SiriusXM and most recently The Athletic. From 1999-2020, he also hosted the David Glenn Show, which became the largest sports radio program in the history of the Carolinas, syndicated in more than 300 North Carolina cities and towns, plus parts of South Carolina and Virginia.

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