Roy Allen Williams (born August 1, 1950) is an American retired college basketball coach who served as the men's head coach for the North Carolina Tar Heels for 18 seasons and the Kansas Jayhawks for 15 seasons. He was inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.
Williams started his college coaching career at UNC Chapel Hill as an assistant coach for Dean Smith in 1978. Four years later, the North Carolina Tar Heels won the national championship. After 10 years as Smith's assistant, Williams became head coach at defending national champion Kansas, in 1988, taking them to 14 consecutive NCAA tournaments, four Final Four appearances, two national championship game appearances, collecting an .805 winning percentage, and winning nine conference titles.
In 2003, Williams left Kansas to return to his alma mater UNC Chapel Hill, replacing Matt Doherty as head coach of the Tar Heels. In an 18-year period at Chapel Hill, Williams won three national championships, reached a total of five Final Fours, finished first in the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season standings nine times, won three ACC tournament championships, one AP National Coach of the Year award, and two ACC Coach of the Year awards. He is third all-time for most wins at Kansas behind Phog Allen and Bill Self, and second all-time for most wins at Chapel Hill behind his legendary mentor, Dean Smith. On January 25, 2020, with a 94–71 win over Miami, Williams reached 880 wins surpassing Smith's 879 win total.
With a total of 903 wins, Williams took his teams to nine Final Fours in his careers at Kansas and UNC Chapel Hill. Williams is the fifth NCAA Men's Division I head coach to reach 900 wins, and reached the mark in fewer games than any other head coach with 900+ wins. He is the only coach in NCAA history to have led two different programs to at least four Final Fours each and the only basketball coach in NCAA history to have 400 or more victories at two NCAA Division I schools. He is also 14th all-time in the NCAA in win percentage among men's college basketball coaches.Sports-Reference Staff. "Career Coaching Leaders and Records for Win–loss percentage". Sports-Reference.com. Accessed February 26, 2021.
With Williams as an assistant coach under Smith, the North Carolina Tar Heels won the 1982 national championship. As a head coach, Williams coached in a total of six NCAA championship games (1991, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2016, and 2017) including both Kansas and Chapel Hill. On April 4, 2005, Williams won the first national championship of his career as the Tar Heels defeated the University of Illinois in the 2005 NCAA championship game. He again led the Tar Heels to a national title on April 6, 2009, against Michigan State. Williams won his third and final national championship on April 3, 2017, when he led the Tar Heels to victory against the Gonzaga Bulldogs. Williams is one of six NCAA Men's Division I college basketball coaches to have won at least three national championships.
Early years Williams was born in Marion, North Carolina, and spent his early years in the small western North Carolina towns of Marion and Spruce Pine. As a child his family relocated to nearby Asheville, where he grew up. Williams lettered in basketball and baseball at T. C. Roberson High School in Asheville, North Carolina, all four years.Official Bio In basketball, playing for Coach Buddy Baldwin, he was named all-county and all-conference for two years (1967 and 1968), all-western North Carolina in 1968 and served as captain in the North Carolina Blue-White All-Star Game. Williams has stated that Coach Baldwin was one of the biggest influences in his life.
Williams went on to play on the freshman team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and study the game under coach Dean Smith. When Williams was a sophomore at UNC Chapel Hill, he asked Smith if he could attend his practices and would sit in the bleachers taking notes on Smith's coaching. Williams also volunteered to keep statistics for Smith at home games and worked in Smith's summer camps.
Coaching career Early coaching years Williams' first coaching job was in 1973 as a high school basketball and golf coach at Charles D. Owen High SchoolCharles D. Owen High School in Black Mountain, North Carolina. He coached basketball and boys' golf for five years and ninth-grade football for four years, and served as athletic director for two years.
In 1978, Williams came back to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and served as an assistant to Dean Smith from 1978 to 1988. During his tenure as assistant coach, UNC Chapel Hill went 275–61 and won the NCAA national championship in 1982, the first for Smith and the second for UNC Chapel Hill. One of Williams' more notable events came as assistant coach when he became instrumental in recruiting Michael Jordan.
Kansas In 1988, Williams became the head coach at Kansas basketball. Weeks after Williams took the position, KU was placed on probation for violations that took place prior to his arrival. As a result, the Jayhawks were banned from postseason play for the 1988–89 season.
Williams coached 15 seasons at Kansas, from 1988 to 2003. During that time he had a record of 418–101, a .805 winning percentage. At the time of his departure, he was second on Kansas' all-time wins list behind only Phog Allen; he has since been passed by current coach Bill Self. Williams' Kansas teams averaged 27.8 wins per season.
Kansas won nine regular-season conference championships over his last 13 years. In seven years of Big 12 Conference play, his teams went 94–18, capturing the regular-season title in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2003 and the postseason tournament crown in 1997, 1998 and 1999. In 2001–02, KU became the first, and only team to go undefeated (16–0) in Big 12 play. In 1995–98, Kansas was a combined 123–17, an average of 30.8 wins per season. Williams' teams went 201–17 (.922) in Allen Fieldhouse, and won 62 consecutive games in Allen from February 1994 to December 1998. Kansas was a regular in the Associated Press Top 25 from 1991 to 1999, placing in the poll for 145 consecutive weeks. Williams' teams were ranked in the Top 10 in 194 AP polls from 1990.
Kansas led the nation in field goal percentage and scoring in 2002 and in scoring margin in 2003; they held opponents to the lowest field goal percentage in the country in 2001 (37.8 percent); led the nation in winning percentage in 1997 and 2002; shot better than 50 percent from the floor for the season seven times; and led the country in field goal percentage in 1990 at 53.3 percent, and in 2002 at 50.6 percent; shot a combined 49.4 percent from the floor in 15 seasons; led the nation in assists in 2001 and 2002 and was seventh in the nation in 2003; scored 100 or more points 71 times (once every 13 games); averaged 82.7 points per game in 15 years; averaged 90 or more points in two seasons (92.1 in 1990 and 90.9 in 2002). Kansas was also the winningest team of the 1990s, despite failing to win any NCAA championships during the decade.
Williams had Kansas in the AP Top 25 in 242 of 268 weekly polls. Kansas reached the No. 1 ranking in the country in six different seasons and was ranked at least No. 2 in the nation in 11 of the 15 seasons.
Under Williams, the team had several deep runs in the NCAA Tournament, making it to four Final Fours and appearing in the national championship game in both 1991 and 2003, losing both, to Duke and Syracuse respectively. The 1996–97 team featured future NBA players Paul Pierce, Jacque Vaughn, Raef LaFrentz, and Scot Pollard. Entering the NCAA Tournament with Pollard (foot stress fracture) and starting shooting guard (later Kansas and UNC assistant coach, and former head coach at Stanford) Jerod Haase (broken wrist) trying to play with injuries, the team was upset in the Sweet Sixteen by the eventual champion, the Arizona Wildcats.Roy, ACC Have Mixed NCAA History As No. 1
Except for his first season at Kansas (when the team was on probation), all of Williams' teams made the NCAA tournament. From 1990 to 1999 Kansas compiled a 286–60 record, giving them both the most wins and best winning percentage of any team in that decade. From 1994 to 1998, the Jayhawks won 62 consecutive home games at Allen Fieldhouse, which was the longest such streak in the NCAA at the time. The seniors of 1998 (LaFrentz, Billy Thomas, and C. B. McGrath) went 58–0 at home during their KU careers.
Williams took the 2003 Kansas team to the NCAA championship game against Syracuse. Syracuse defeated Kansas, 81–78, to win the championship. On April 13, Williams announced that he would be leaving Kansas for the North Carolina coaching position, having been courted for it once before in 2000, stating "There's several factors [for my decision] -- my roots, my dream and my family. And I think all three things are my factors. And I don't mind saying this, but there's Coach [Dean] Smith. It's hard saying 'no' to him twice."
UNC Chapel Hill Williams accepted the North Carolina Tar Heels head coaching position. He left Kansas as the second-winningest coach in school history, behind only Hall of Famer Phog Allen, who, like Williams, is a member of a coaching tree dating back to the game's inventor, James Naismith. However, he has since been passed by current coach Bill Self.
With Williams' return to UNC Chapel Hill, he became the school's third coach in six years. The previous two coaches, Smith and Frank McGuire, had covered a 45-year period. The Tar Heels were coming off of a mediocre season and two years before had suffered the worst season in school history. Nevertheless, the team still had top talent, including McDonald's All Americans Sean May, Rashad McCants, and Raymond Felton. In Williams' first season as the Tar Heels' head coach, the 2003–04 season, Chapel Hill finished a respectable 19–11 and returned to the national rankings for the first time since the early part of the 2002–03 season. They were knocked out in the second round of the NCAA tournament by Texas.
2004–05: First championship In Williams' second year, the Tar Heels returned to national prominence. With the arrival of freshman Marvin Williams, Williams led Chapel Hill to a National Championship in 2005, which was his first national title as a head coach.
2005–08 After winning the championship, the team's top seven scorers all left, either via graduation or opting to go to the NBA early. Despite the loss of talent, the Tar Heels proved to be surprisingly successful in 2005–06, in part due to freshman Tyler Hansbrough. Williams was named Coach of the Year for his ability to turn around such a new team to such a high level of success.
Williams quickly reloaded the team with top talent, bringing in recruits like Brandan Wright, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, and Deon Thompson. On December 9, 2006, Williams won his 500th game with a 94–69 win over High Point. The 2006–07 team tied as ACC regular season champions, earning the tiebreak over the Virginia Cavaliers. With the #1 seed, the Tar Heels won the ACC tournament. After earning a #1 seed in the East Region in the 2007 NCAA Tournament, Williams' team won its first-round game against Eastern Kentucky Colonels 86–65 and its second against Michigan State 81–67. Chapel Hill then defeated the USC Trojans 74–64 to advance to the Elite Eight. On March 24, 2007, Chapel Hill fell to the Georgetown Hoyas in overtime in the East Regional, ending its post-season run. Following the 2006–2007 season, Williams announced on July 18, 2007, that he had vertigo, a condition that occasionally forces him to sit down suddenly during games.