Roy Williams, never ever fully comprehended and never ever absolutely appreciated, a North Carolinian to the main

He gained a few NCAA championships and talked additional following each and every about the championships he did not acquire.

And he won an astounding 18 convention regular-season titles, which he viewed as extra essential than meeting tournament titles, at instances insulting the sacred ACC Tournament as very little additional than a “cocktail get together.”

Williams could shock the state’s basketball supporters who grew up with Tobacco Highway smugness, who thought the sport was invented by the Major 4 educational institutions. He stunned people today with his honesty, in some cases getting to apologize to the “blue-haired girls,” occasionally gorgeous the Carolina Blue devoted by praising arch-rival Mike Krzyzewski and Duke, a grudging regard he would never bestow on N.C. State.

If he considered Wake Forest a real rival, he in no way admitted it.

And the most coronary heart-rending decision he at any time created enraged the outdated-dollars Carolina admirers in 2000 when he stated “no” to the program and stayed three far more decades at Kansas.

A single of his past functions at UNC was to kiss the floor they named for him. It was his way of declaring “goodbye.”

Williams by no means actually considered he was 1 on the level with Smith, and deep down he under no circumstances definitely thought he was completely approved by some Carolina fans.

In the finish, he was a North Carolinian to the main, a person of the mountains who fought his way to Chapel Hill, dreaming all together of practically nothing more than a weekend at the seashore and a round of golf with the fellas.