Roy Williams Calls Leaving Kansas for UNC in 2003 'Low Point' of Career
May 20, 2020
Roy Williams has gone 467-152 and claimed three NCAA national championships since taking over as North Carolina's head men's basketball coach in 2003.
Yet he told Kansas City's 610 Sports Radio on Monday that didn't feel so great about his move from Kansas to North Carolina when he decided to leave the Jayhawks (h/t 247Sports' Scott Chasen):
"If I had known how dirty I was going to feel walking out of that meeting where I told the players I was leaving, I never could have done it. Because that was the low point. I just felt so worthless. And yet my sister was sick back in North Carolina. My dad was sick. My dad died—we weren’t real close, but my dad died the first year I was back. My sister died three years later. And coach [Dean] Smith himself had said, 'We wanted you the other time. We need you this time.'"
The Tar Heels previously tried to lure Williams in 2000, but he decided to stay in Lawrence.
"I went through it in 2000, and I had promised Nick Collison I was going to be there his whole career," Williams added. "And I never could figure out how to justify leaving after I promised a kid. That was the biggest thing."
Williams led Kansas from 1988 through the 2002-03 campaign. The Jayhawks went 418-101 under Williams but never won a national championship.
The 2019-20 season saw Williams surpass the late Dean Smith, his mentor at North Carolina, for fourth on the Division I all-time wins list:
The 70-year-old Williams grew up near Asheville, North Carolina, and completed his bachelor's degree in education at UNC in 1972.