6A
Wednesday, December 6, 1995
PROFILE
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
I have a dream of winning a national championship.
Roy Williams
Kansas men's basketball coach
Continued from Page 1A.
From about the sixth grade on, some of the children in Asheville, N.C. would stop at a service station on their way home from school to buy a Coke. Except for Roy Williams—He didn't have the dime.
CHAPTER 1
GROWING UP POOR
ROY WILLIAMS:
But when his mom, Lallage Williams, found out that her son was trying to take on odd jobs so he could join the rest of the children in their after-school treat, she
made sure he never went another day without the 10 cents it took to be like the other children.
Growing up wasn't easy in the Williams household.
"My home life wasn't the best," Williams recalled. "I knew that I didn't have what other people had. But I'm sure other people had it a lot worse, though."
Williams was born Aug. 1,
1950, in Asheville. His father
and mother — who had a 6th
and 10th grade education
respectively — separated
for the last time when he was
12 years old. His father, an
alcoholic, left behind a single
mother with two children
and no child support.
Two years after his father left, Francis, Williams' older sister by four years, also left the fold.
Lallage dropped out of school during her sophomore year of high school to work. She never owned a home, never had a car.
William always has described his mother as his hero.
GETTING TO KNOW ROY
"Her life was a difficult one as far as the amount of hours she had to work to try to take care of things and make ends meet," Williams said. "But she always did her best to make sure that I was taken care of."
I want to be important to them.
Growing up, Williams and his mother would bum rides or take the bus, and he hitchkicked back and forth to college his freshman year.
"Regardless of how much she struggled, how much she worked, I never felt like I was any different than anybody else," Williams said. "I had some people who were really good to me."
**BORN:** Aug. 1, 1950 Asheville, N.C.
**WIFE:** Wanda
**CHILDREN:** Scott 18, Kimberly 16
**HOBBY:** Golf
**EDUCATION:**
North Carolina, B.S., Education, 1972
North Carolina, M.S., Education, 1973
**PLAYING**
**EXPERIENCE:**
Freshman, North Carolina, 1968-69
**PREVIOUS COACHING**
**EXPERIENCE:**
1973-77 — Charles D.
Owen High School,
Swannanoa, N.C.
1978-88 — Assistant,
North Carolina
Always the straight arrow, Williams never smoked and never drank, even though his friends did. Whenever someone at a high school party gave him trouble about his teetotaling habits, those same friends came to his defense.
Williams bought his mother her first home in 1984. He also bought her first car before she died in 1992.
COURTESY OF ROY WILLIAMS
It seems people always were looking out for Williams. Whether it was his best friends' families making sure that he had a ride, coaches and teachers keeping tabs on him, or friends standing up for him, someone always was there.
"I had a childhood that at a lot of times was not very pleasant. I had a childhood that was pretty sad a lot of times," he recalled. "But I had a tremendous amount of love and a tremendous amount of people who wanted to help Roy Williams. I really felt like I was a lucky kid."
Buddy Baldwin looked out for Williams, too.
but I know I'll never be the important as my high school coach was to me," Williams said of Baldwin, his basketball coach. "He was the most influential person to me as I was growing up."
Baldwin remembers his former caddie as small but good at handling the basketball. Of course, there were other reasons why a freshman point guard who was not starting on the junior varsity team became a starter on varsity the next year.
"I remember watching him play basketball, how hard he played and how hard he worked," Baldwin said. "The biggest thing Roy had going for him was that he was a good leader, had a good knowledge of the game and he loved to play."
Roy Williams during his high school days. When he was 12 years old, Williams' father deserted the family. "My home life wasn't the best," Williams recalled.
To this day, Baldwin still is important to his pupil.
hawks were in the 1991 Final Four and again to New Orleans for the 1993 Final Four.
Baldwin plans to be there when Roy wins the "big one."
The two talk every two weeks or so during the basketball season. Williams even flew Baldwin and his wife to Indianapolis when the Jay-
Graduating from high school, Roy Williams was one of the best basketball players in western North Carolina. He probably could have had a full scholarship to play basketball somewhere.
"I want to see him win it all," Baldwin said.
That would have been a godsend, considering his financial backing from home, which amounted to two cash installments totaling $50 from his mother.
CHAPTER 2
CHAPEL HILL CALLS
He knew, even then, that he wasn't meant to be a plaver.
COURTESY OF KANSAS SPORTS INFORMATION
Instead, Williams followed his dream of coaching to North Carolina and to men's
Roy Williams on growing up in a single-family family in Asheville, N.C.
The Williams family: son Scott, a freshman at North Carolina; wife Wanda; daughter Kimberly, a student at Lawrence High School; and Roy. The Coach makes a point of spending time at home whenever possible but doing so isn't always easy as Kansas' high-profile basketball coach.
basketball coach Dean Smith.
I had a childhood that was pretty sad a lot of times.
"We had six or seven scholarship players on the freshman team," Williams said. "Even some of those guys didn't start or play, as much as they wanted to. I wasn't good enough to play, and I knew already at that time that I wanted to be a coach."
Williams actually had planned to go to Georgia Tech and major in engineering after graduating from T.C. Roberson High School. But after hearing that Williams wanted to enter coaching, Buddy Baldwin
recommended that he attend Baldwin's alma mater: North Carolina.
Williams never made the varsity basketball team, but his job allowed him to stay near the gym. Before going to work, he would spend hours watching the varsity basketball team practice. He took notes on what he saw.
At the end of his freshman year, Williams was umpiring intramural softball. He officiated almost every North Carolina intramural sport during his sophomore and junior years. As a senior, he was supervisor of officials.
After graduating, Williams spent five years at Charles D. Owen High School in Swannanoa, N.C. There, he coached basketball, boy's golf and 9th grade football. Eventually, he became athletics director.
It's a technique Williams uses today.
"My whole philosophy was being formed at that time," he said. "You were always encouraging and instructing."
The rigorous schedule of working, observing and studying couldn't have been easy. But Williams never complained.
In 1977, Williams once again set out down the road toward becoming a college basketball coach.
wanted to work in basketball camp referrer.
It was during that basketball camp that Smith watched Williams coach for the first time — Because at North Carolina, you didn't referee with the whistle in your mouth. You held it so you could also coach the team while it was playing.
After graduating in 1972, he decided to stay at Chapel Hill to get his master's degree in education.
"To balance out some of those tough years, I had it so much easier during my high school and my college years because I knew what I wanted to do," Williams said. "Nobody had it any easier than I did, and I really believe that."
During the summer, while Williams was taking classes, Smith asked him if he wanted to work as a night camp referee.
And once again, this road took him to North Carolina—a move he never will forget.
"Wanda and I had just built a new home and Scott was a year old," Williams recalled. "I'm driving down to Chapel Hill from Asheville in a U-Haul. It was a little scary; my wife, my one-year-old son, $2,700 and nothing else."
He isn't here a lot so we've kind of learned to live our lives without him.
Unlike most schools, North Carolina had never had a part-time assistant. Until Williams got there. The newly created position included recruiting, coaching the J.V.
Wanda Williams The Coach's wife
team and working at camps.
It was a full-time job with part-time pay. As the J.V. coach, Williams was a guinea pig.
"Coach sometimes would give me things to try," Williams said. "I could do all kinds of crazy things because I would never have to read in the morning paper the next day whether I was right or wrong. Nobody covered the games anyway."
schools, but it wasn't until 1988, when Larry Brown vacated the Kansas head coaching position, that Williams left North Carolina for the first time in his life.
This time, Williams' stay at Chapel Hill lasted 11 seasons. During the last few seasons, Williams was courted by various Division I-A
CHAPTER 3 FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD
The first and only college head coach's position Roy Williams took on was by no means an easy one.
He left Chapel Hill to coach the defending national champions, to replace a popular and successful coach, to find his team under NCAA investigation and to lead a team whose star player, Danny Manning, had left for the NBA.
Williams first heard about the job from Smith, a Kansas alumnus, but didn't think an assistant coach had a chance of getting hired.
Instead, he decided to take his family on vacation to Bermuda. To prove to Williams that Kansas' offer was serious, Kansas Athletic Director Bob Frederick intercepted him in the middle of the night at the William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport.
The two returned under cover of darkness to Lawrence, where the offer was finalized. Williams never had seen the campus when he agreed to take the position.
pus when he agreed to take the position. After being shunned by many preseason polls before the 1989-90 season, Kansas quickly regained the nation's respect by winning the preseason NIT with wins against Alabama-Birmingham, Louisiana State, Nevada-Los Vegas and St John's.
In fact, the Jayhawks compiled 19 consecutive wins and finished the season with 30 wins, only to be defeated by UCLA in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The loss only made the team hungrier. Although it finished the 1990-91 season with more losses than the previous year, Kansas made a run through the NCAA Tournament — a run that included a victory over Williams' mentor, Smith, and North Carolina — only to lose in the championship 72-65 to Duke.
Although his team had a successful season, Williams was disappointed with the Final Four experience.
The Coach remembered that two-thirds of the questions he answered leading up to the North Carolina game were about his relationship with Smith and North Carolina — not his kids. "It was an unbelievable distraction because of the media," he said.
Once the game started, though, it was no different than playing any other coach.
"The only time it made any difference to me during the game was when the referee called two technicals on Coach," Williams said. "I knew that would get more attention than our kids winning the game."
With less than a minute to play, Smith was thrown out of the game for leaving the coaching box.
Ever the class act, Smith walked over to Williams and said, "You know I didn't plan this." Smith promptly shook the Kansas coach's hand and proceeded to shake hands with each of the players on the bench.
Then he quietly left the court, hoping to return the spotlight to the young Kansas team.
In 1983, Smith and Williams talked the night before both teams left for the Final Four in New Orleans. The coaches agreed they each would make a statement and then wouldn't answer any more questions about their relationship.
At first, Williams was upset that Smith got the better of him this time around as Kansas lost 78-68. But after he learned to accept the loss, the Kansas coach changed his travel arrangements so that he could stay for the championship game.
"I enjoyed watching the game; I enjoyed cheering for North Carolina," Williams said. "So many people said that he couldn't win the big one. I was happy for him to get that off his back."
Now it is the younger coach's turn to hear about not being able to win the national championship.
CHAPTER 4 AT HOME WITH ROY
The first time Roy Williams' children, Scott and Kimberly, saw somebody ask their father for an autograph, they both laughed. Williams' wife, Wanda Williams, could see why.
"They though it was hilarious that anybody would want their dad's autograph. He started coaching the day after we got back from our honeymoon, so I've never known anything else," she said. "He isn't here a lot so we've kind of learned to live our lives without him. Not that it's a bad thing. It's just the way it is."
That's life with a big-time college basketball coach.
"She has understood the commitment you have to have in college coaching," Williams said. "Even though she didn't like it all the time or enjoy it, she still understands it. The kids, they understand it too."
Wanda gave up her teaching position when Williams returned to take the assistant coach's position at Chapel Hill, N.C. The couple couldn't accept that their son was being raised by a stranger in a day-care center. It has made all the difference in the world to Williams.
"I guess my job: to make sure that things run smoothly at home." Wanda said
things run smoothly at home," Wanda said. The Coach is quick to admit that his family has made far more sacrifices than he ever has. Things such as not being there for dance recitals or, ironically, basketball