Roy Williams on 2016 Final, Marcus Paige, Michael Jordan, 2017 Redemption, Luck, Legacy, Parting Gifts, Favorite Golf Courses, Wrightsville Beach, More
By David Glenn
(Note: This is the fourth (and final) installment of David Glenn’s “Roy Williams Goes to College” series — you can find parts one, two and three here, here and here respectively)
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 2021 retirement, but mostly playful. He became emotional while talking about his mother, childhood and other things.
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 (some of which he had answered for others many times) was his only concern in the world at the time.
This is Part Four of a four-part summary of Williams’ visit to UNCW’s COM 495 class.
Part One included an extended introduction in which Williams offered some opening comments, before turning the class over to an hour-long Q&A led by the students that included questions/answers about his retirement, parents and grandchildren, former players, technology challenges, 10-cent Coca-Colas, wild triglycerides and much more.
Part Two continued the in-depth Q&A and included questions/answers on his 2-19 season, NC State, Dean Smith, Hubert Davis, his wife Wanda, what he misses most about coaching and much more.
Part Three continued the Q&A and included questions/answers on Williams’ famous national-TV profanity, the driver/salesman jobs he tackled as a young coach to feed his family, what it took to achieve 18 first-place conference finishes (in 33 seasons!), his relationship with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, what makes a good sports communications professional and much more.
UNCW Student Question: Coach, your 2016 (national runner-up) and 2017 (national champion) seasons obviously ended very differently. How do you summarize the dramatic ups and downs of that two-year journey to your third and final NCAA title?
Williams: In 2016, I thought we were really a good basketball team. We won the ACC regular season, we win the ACC conference tournament, we get into the NCAA Tournament, and we play and we win and we win and we win, and we’re playing Villanova in the national championship game.
We were down 10 with four minutes to go. We come back, and Marcus Paige makes the most unbelievable shot I’ve ever seen in that kind of pressure situation, to tie the game up. Then, they come down, and Kris Jenkins makes the big shot to beat us (77-74).
After the game, I’m sort of in a little holding area, right outside of our locker room. All of a sudden, somebody wrapped their arms around me in a big bear hug, and he said, ‘I just came to see how you were.’ And that was Michael Jordan. I appreciated that, but I was so emotional that I said, ‘Michael, would you please go in there and just tell ‘em that you’re proud of ‘em, because I don’t know what to say.’ I mean, we had fought back, you get right to (the cusp of) the national championship, and all of a sudden somebody makes a shot at the buzzer to beat you.
(Jordan) said, ‘Yes, I will.’ I just needed a few more minutes to try to decide what to say. The funny thing is, Michael goes into the locker room, and I stand at the back of the room. Marcus Paige told me later, because he had his head down in his hands, under a towel, when he heard this voice. All of a sudden, he realized it wasn’t me talking. So he pulls the towel out of the way and sees Michael Jordan, standing in our locker room, talking to him. So that was the humorous thing, Marcus wondering, ‘who is that talking?’ before seeing Michael Jordan, although it had to be quite a bit later to see the humor in all of it.
The crazy thing is, in the locker room, the only thing I could think of was, ‘Guys, there’s no way I can change the hurt you feel right now, because I’m feeling the same way. There’s no way I can change that. But I promise you that, over these next months, I’m gonna work harder than I’ve ever worked to try to make sure that we can get back to this spot again.’
Now, Marcus Paige and Brice (Johnson) and Joel (James), there’s nothing I can do for you (as departing seniors) except — and it’s even emotional (now) — except that I will make sure your alma mater has a coach that’s gonna work his tail off to try to get back to this stage. Players have to use it as fuel, to motivate you to work more in the summer. You work your tail off, you’re dead tired, well, let’s work 10 more minutes.
Then, the crazy thing is, the next year, and I’m being honest, I had never heard the word ‘redemption’ until we get to Phoenix (for the 2017 Final Four) and they brought it up to me. But I knew in the back of my mind how hard I’d worked in the offseason to recruit and to coach and to look at everything we had done. Did we do this well enough? Do we need to improve here?
Then, all of a sudden, we’re there (in another NCAA title game, against Gonzaga). This time, we make a shot, block their shot, and we win. So it was a big contrast.
Yet, the crazy thing is, the first day of practice in 2017, I allowed them to put a mic on me during practice, which we didn’t do very often. So I get the guys up at the huddle, at the center line, where we circle up. I speak to them for three or four minutes, and then we start working. And I told them that day, and I looked around the room, around the circle (points his finger as if going person to person), and said, ‘Right in front of me is a team that’s not only good enough to play on Monday night (for the NCAA title), but is good enough to win on Monday night. Let’s make sure that we focus, every practice, that you’re coming out with one goal in mind, to be the (pauses to emphasize) best team and to have a chance to win on Monday night.’
And the crazy thing is, I forgot about (that preseason speech). So we do win it, and then at the basketball banquet, they played that tape, and I got cold chills. I mean, I really did.
So, the difference was, we were lucky. We were unlucky when we didn’t win it the year before, when we were right there, and yet we were lucky the next year. I’ve never failed to realize that luck is a part of it, too.
UNCW Student Question: When Coach Smith passed away, he left one last gift to his former players, which of course was a check with a note saying he wanted them to enjoy a dinner out on him. What is something you’d like to leave behind for your players to remember you by?
Williams: Yeah, I’ve even thought of doing the same kind of thing, but I want to wait until I die (laughs), like Coach Smith did.
The thing I keep feeling is I want them to know that, every single day, I gave them everything I had. Everything. (Chokes up a bit.) And the other thing would be that, I might have gotten on ‘em sometimes, I might have pushed ‘em sometimes to an uncomfortable stage, but I did care about ‘em. Those are the only two things.
My buddies tease me a little about saying ‘we did OK’ (at his retirement press conference). They’re still trying to suck up; they think they’re gonna get more tickets if they suck up to me right now. My buddies always would say, ‘you did better than OK.’ We did OK in the basketball, but I really want (my former players) to know that I gave them every (pause) single (pause) thing I had.
UNCW Student Question: Coach, we couldn’t let you go without a golf question. What is your favorite golf course that you’ve played personally?
Williams: I’ve never had a press conference without (golf) being mentioned at least once. (Laughs.) Well, I’ve been spoiled butt rotten. I’ve played in some great, great places.
I’m a North Carolina guy. I’m a Tar Heel. If I could play any course in the world (snaps his fingers), just by snapping my fingers, which meant I didn’t have to drive or fly or anything like that, I would play Grandfather Mountain, up in the mountains of North Carolina. It’s just so beautiful, it feels like home, and it looks a million times different from what I felt like my childhood looked like. I love that place.
I love Pine Valley. I love Augusta National. I love Forest Creek, Pinehurst. I love Bulls Bay, Wild Dunes. I’m a guy that loves those courses.
I do really, really enjoy playing, and it’s the competition for me. I like to beat people. All my buddies, they realize, I’m playing (against) par every day. If you give me my choice … and there were a few times I played par and broke par, I’ve shot 69 five times in my life.
When I was a high school (basketball) coach, I also coached on the golf team, so I got a lot of practice at that time. College coaching got my handicap going in the wrong direction. But if you give me my choice … I played in a tournament last summer, and the last round I had the best round I had all year. It was a competition, and I loved it!
So to me, if you give me my choice of shooting 73, 74, 75 and losing $300, or shooting 81, 82, 83 and winning, I’m gonna take that, losing the money, because to me it’s about playing par every day.
UNCW Student Question: Coach, my freshman year, in 2019, y’all came down to Wilmington to play UNCW, and it was the best atmosphere that Trask Coliseum has ever seen. With the fan support here so up and down over the years, what would your suggestions be to get people more fired up more often about the Seahawks?
Williams: You know, it’s really strange, because it’s like the chicken or the egg. What comes first? If you have great fan involvement, that helps your team win. Well, how do you get great fan involvement? It’s by your team winning.
I remember the atmosphere down there. I thought it was sensational. I had my grandsons there, sitting on the bench, before the game. It was a wonderful atmosphere.
It’s hard to have a formula where you can say, this will work. But I know you gotta do both. You’ve got to have tremendous fan involvement, tremendous atmosphere, a tremendous home-court advantage, or you’re not gonna have a chance to be as good as you want to be. At the same time, you gotta have good players (who) work their tails off to be really good.
There’s no simple answer there, but … what’s the saying? I’m big on sayings. ‘I cannot control the wind, but I can adjust the sails.’ What that means is, there’s some things you can do that will help. You can’t control which way that wind’s blowing, but you can adjust the sails. You can’t control how well the team shoots from the 3-point line, but you can control you going in there with your buddies and being as loud as you can.
So that’s what I would try to do, and I would say the same thing to the team. But the game of basketball is hard. We (UNC) had two losses over the weekend (earlier this season), and it shows that those other teams have the desire to win, too. So, it’s a difficult game.
Basketball, to me, is the greatest game there is. I love it. There were many years, almost all of them, and David will know that I never told my athletic director this, but I would have coached for free. They didn’t have to pay me; I would have coached for free. Now, I’m glad they did. (Smiles.) I never told my athletic director any of this before the season started, either. (Laughs.)
You know, I used to love soul music. The Temptations. Otis Redding, ‘Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay,’ is my favorite song of all-time. Michael Jackson. Then I took a break from music for quite a while. I didn’t like the electric funk, electric hard rock, rap; I just didn’t like any of that. Then, all of a sudden, I got more interested in country music. Now, in my car, I’ve got soul music, country music.
Luke Bryan’s got a song out now that’s the best advice I can give anybody. Anybody. Now, I think the name of the song (with Jordan Davis) is, ‘Buy Dirt.’ Luke Bryan’s got a line in there, it says, ‘Find something you love to do, and call it work.’ That’s what I did, and that’s what I hope that each one of you guys will be able to do, because that’s as good as it gets, right there.
UNCW Student Question: We think of you mostly as a Chapel Hill guy and an Asheville guy, but for many years now, people in the Wilmington area often have seen you jogging, walking or out to dinner here or in Wrightsville Beach. How deep are your connections to this area?
Williams: Well, you know, I spent 15 years at Kansas. It’s hard to find a beach in Kansas, and I looked everywhere. (Laughs.)
That’s what I love about North Carolina and what I love about Chapel Hill: two and a half hours in one direction I’m at the beach, three and a half hours (in the other direction) I’m in the mountains.
We have had a place in Charleston (S.C.) since 1996, but it’s four and a half to five hours, hard. All of a sudden, I developed a great friend, (long-time Wilmington businessman and UNC alum) Rusty Carter and his family. They had a place at Wrightsville Beach, and I went down to see them a couple times and fell in love with Wrightsville Beach.
I loved walking the loop. There was a day when I used to sprint, then I jogged, then I jogged and walked. Now I just walk. But I love the Wrightsville Beach area.
The only tough thing, and the reason we sold it, we just sold it a little over a year ago (summer 2020), is just because I was only able to get there Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend.
But I loved Wrightsville Beach. I love Jerry’s. I love the ice cream place there at Wrightsville; going there is as good as it gets. And I do enjoy being at the beach.
Me: Coach, thank you for this, and for probably 20 years’ worth of visits on my radio show. I know you get a lot of requests, and this hour-plus with my students and me is a long time. This has been a wonderful learning experience, and we truly appreciate it.
Williams: Well, David, let me tell you … I felt like the media gave me a fair shake all the time, but there are some people that I really trusted.
I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this, but I’ve always trusted you to be extremely fair, honest in everything you did, and you’ve always cared about people, and I like that. And that’s what I see in the class here, that you really care about these kids.
So this was a neat deal. Now I’m going back out there on the court, to watch the last 30 minutes of practice. Thanks so much, everybody. Hope I didn’t put you to sleep!
(Featured image: Dakota Moyer/Chapelboro.com)
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.
