Millions of people are filling out March Madness brackets for the NCAA Tournament, but don’t count Roy Williams among them.
“[1977] was the last bracket I ever filled out,” Williams said during his weekly radio. “I think it’s stupid, so I just don’t do it.”
It’s not a surprise that Williams hasn’t filled out a bracket since 1977.
In 1978, the Hall of Fame coach returned to UNC to serve as an assistant to Coach Dean Smith. From there, Williams took the job as head coach at Kansas in 1988 before returning to Chapel Hill once again in 2003.
So it makes sense that Williams, who has been coaching college basketball since 1978, hasn’t filled out an NCAA Tournament bracket in quite a while.
However, Williams did share a funny story about his final March Madness bracket.
While coaching at Charles D. Owens High School in Black Mountain, Williams set up a bracket pool for all the teachers in the school.
“I was the good cop. So at the end, my principal was sort of complaining about his team and I didn’t want my team. And so I said, I’ll trade you. And so he traded me, gave me Tennessee and I felt real good. That was Bernard King and Ernie Grunfeld.”
Williams said he traded Marquette for the rights to own Tennessee.
Highlighted by King, a future Hall of Famer, Tennessee went 22-6 but ultimately lost in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament by Syracuse.
Meanwhile, Marquette ended up winning the national championship. Coach Al McGuire, another future Hall of Famer, earned his only championship by defeating Dean Smith’s Tar Heels in the title game.
After trading away Marquette only to see them win the national championship, Williams joked that he swore not to fill out a bracket again.
“I said at that time, I’m never going to do anything like this again.”
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