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Roy Williams, who lost two title games with Kansas, is back with a North Carolina team that is not as devoted to him as the Jayhawks were

A Coach's Unsentimental Journey
By JOE DRAPE

ST. LOUIS, April 3 - He dropped a few dadgums and, for the umpteenth time, told the story about the lesson he learned from his mentor, Dean Smith, on how not to let a national title or lack of one define a coaching career. He also became steely-eyed and prickly at the suggestion that he had meddled in a Kansas program he had left behind by exchanging phone calls this season with two of his former players.

Roy Williams was being Roy Williams on Sunday. It meant that he sometimes came across as homespun as Sheriff Andy in Mayberry, and sometimes like the warden in "Cool Hand Luke," who brought menace to the phrase, "What we've got here is failure to communicate."

In just his second year as the coach of his alma mater, Williams has North Carolina in the national championship game, where the Tar Heels' followers believe their team belongs annually. By arriving at Monday night's game against Illinois, however, he once again had to answer questions about a wildly successful, and often melodramatic, career.

Williams's teams have won 80 percent of their games over 17 seasons and have reached the Final Four five times, but he has not won a national championship, twice losing title games at Kansas. He dismissed any suggestion that he was a sentimental choice, and he said that he backed front-runners like his beloved Yankees and preferred the dominance of Tiger Woods to the hard luck of Phil Mickelson.

"I would think if we don't win, it puts a heck of a lot more pressure on old Roy because you guys will be able to ask the dadgum question another year," he said. "I would like to win it, because I have that desire. But the other reason is so guys will ask me how many hole in ones did you have this summer. I'd love to have that question."

This talented, and in the past troubled, Tar Heels team may offer Williams the best chance to hold forth about his golfing handicap. He inherited it the week after Kansas lost to Syracuse in the 2003 championship game, ending a drama that was part Shakespearean and part the product of the college coaching roundelay.

It began when Matt Doherty, a player Williams coached at North Carolina and who had served as his top assistant at Kansas, resigned as the Tar Heels' coach after a three-year tenure marked by inconsistent performances and rocky relations with many of these same players, as well as alumni. Williams was preparing the Jayhawks for the Final Four in New Orleans and was critical of Doherty's treatment by North Carolina administrators and fans.

But at the same time, it was an open secret that Williams was the top choice to replace his former lieutenant. He refused to talk about the North Carolina job at the Final Four, and even lashed out - dropping an expletive much stronger than dadgum - at the CBS sideline reporter Bonnie Bernstein, who asked him about his plans in the moments after the Syracuse defeat.

Despite an outpouring of love and support from Kansas fans, Williams decided to return to his native North Carolina. When Bill Self, then the Illinois coach, filled Williams's vacancy at Kansas, the Illini hired Bruce Weber from Southern Illinois. Like Williams, Weber is in only his second season with the Illini and is coaching players his predecessor recruited.

But this is Weber's first trip to the Final Four and, after initial resistance last season, the Illini appear to be united behind their coach. Williams and his Tar Heels, on the other hand, had a rougher transition. He characterized last season as one of the most difficult in his career, questioned his players' effort and was unhappy with their tendency to put individual goals ahead of the team.

Still, he was gentle with them.

"When Coach first came in, you know, he was more worried about our feelings," the senior guard Jackie Manuel said. "He really didn't want to rub anybody the wrong way. This year, he changed that. He just wanted everybody to work hard. It really didn't matter how we felt about it."

So, when North Carolina lost its season opener against Santa Clara, Williams punished his team with one set of leg-burning defensive drills after another, withheld water, made his players watch more than two hours of film and dissected every frame of their folly. He has not let up.

Last week, after the Tar Heels won the Syracuse Regional, Williams was still not happy with his team's defensive effort. When the Tar Heels returned to practice Monday, they found the rims in their practice facility had been removed and they knew they were not going to be running offensive sets.

"This year, it's been much more matter of fact because they're on the same page that I am," Williams said. "We've all been concerned about North Carolina winning. That's the only concern."

As might be expected, these Tar Heels do not exude the warm and fuzzy family feel that Williams's Kansas teams did. Williams often complimented the hard work and talent his North Carolina players demonstrated this season, but Sunday he was most passionate defending his brief phone contacts with Aaron Miles and Wayne Simien of Kansas. Self had implied that he did not appreciate Williams's outreach.

"Yes, it does bother me for somebody to say I interfered," Williams said. "I did interfere because I recruited all those kids and I cared about all those kids."

Not surprising perhaps for a group that suffered through an 8-20 season two years ago and was blamed for pushing Doherty out, few Tar Heels proclaim devotion to Williams, but they do offer words of respect.

"I don't think we're trying to win a championship for Coach Williams," the senior forward Jawad Williams said. "We're trying to win a championship for ourselves. It's something we haven't done, either. Hopefully we can meet halfway and get this thing done together."

Whether or not North Carolina wins Monday night, Williams insists that he will continue to coach his team and conduct himself the only way he knows how - heartfelt always, ornery sometimes.

He will also fall back for the umpteenth time on the words Smith told him shortly after North Carolina won the national title in 1982.

"I was relieved after we won the national championship," said Williams, who was Smith's assistant when he won his first title. "I had tears rolling down my face. I said, 'I'm so happy because it will shut those people up.' "

Smith told him it did not matter.

"I'm not that much better a coach now than I was two and a half hours ago," Williams said Smith told him. "You sit back and think about it, and he really wasn't."

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