On average, Roy Williams is the best college coach ever.
Without getting into the weeds of numbers and fractions, Williams has won more games per season than any other coach, including all-time leader Mike Krzyzewski (1142) and Roy’s mentor Dean Smith, whom he tied with 879 career victories by beating Yale.
It had to be that way, since young Roy was 10 years older than Coach K and eight years older than Coach Smith was when he became a head coach at the age of 38. Williams has averaged about 28 wins per season while Krzyzewski has won 25-plus games in his 45th season and Smith 24-plus games in his 36 years.
Now, college basketball teams play more games per season than in the 1970s and ‘80s, giving Roy a chance to catch up, but he also had to win more of those additional games to do so. In 15 years at Kansas, Williams averaged just under 28 wins. Thirteen games into his 17th season at Carolina, Roy has averaged just over 28 wins.
Carolina’s alumnus coach says he doesn’t care much about those numbers, that he didn’t even know he was approaching Smith’s record until Jones Angell mentioned it last summer on the annual Rams Club tour of the state. He was only concerned with beating a good Yale team Monday night to wrangle another win that would keep the Tar Heels in contention for an NCAA tournament bid.
His latest team still can’t shoot straight but is getting better, ironically, with two freshmen who haven’t played much basketball the last two years inspiring the upperclassmen and graduate transfers with a lot more experience to play dad gum harder.
He certainly doesn’t want this season to resemble 2010, when Carolina missed the NCAA and went to the NIT in the 100th year of UNC Basketball and when, ironically, the program reached 2,000 all-time victories while wins were hard to come by.
He recalls Smith walking into his office in March of 1988 and telling him, confidentially, that he has a chance to get the Kansas job. Williams had just finished his second season as a full-time assistant coach on the staff. “I thought Coach Smith had lost it,” Roy recalled.
“I would have been happy to be Coach Smith’s assistant until he left, happy to be Coach Guthridge’s assistant until he left and happy to be Eddie Fogler’s assistant until he left, and I would have left with him. Except I would have gone to the golf course and Eddie to the track.”
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