Tobacco Road leads to New Orleans on Saturday as North Carolina’s NCAA Tournament game vs. Duke will feature an exciting first in this storied rivalry — and represent the end of an era.
On one hand, it will be the first March Madness meeting between the teams (and in the Final Four, at that). It will also be the final game for Duke legend Mike Krzyzewski, who will retire following the end of the 2022 NCAA Tournament, regardless of whether it results in a sixth national championship.
DECOURCY: Williams on retirement: It’s been good, and it has to be, because I miss coaching
Of course, Coach K’s contemporary, Roy Williams, is likely to be in attendance at Saturday’s game. But Williams won’t be on the court facing his old rival — that place belongs to Hubert Davis, who succeeded the Tar Heels legend in much the same way Bill Guthridge replaced Dean Smith in 1997-98.
What led Williams to retire after a successful 18-year stint at his alma mater that included nine nine ACC regular-season championships, three ACC Tournament championships, five Final Four berths and three national championships? Like Coach K, his decision to move on from coaching was partly informed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the belief that he was no longer “the right man” for the position.
Here is Williams’ reasoning to retire at UNC, just one year before Coach K at Duke:
Why did Roy Williams retire at UNC?
Williams announced his retirement on April 1, 2021, just weeks removed from his team’s first-round 85-62 loss to Wisconsin in the 2021 NCAA Tournament — the only first-round defeat a Williams-coached team ever suffered in 30 trips to March Madness.
In explaining his decision, Williams said his health was not a factor — only that he no longer felt he was “the right man” for the job:
“But deep down inside, I knew that the only thing that would speed that up (was) if I did not feel that I was any longer the right man for the job,” he explained in his retirement news conference (via the Associated Press). “I’m not going say the best man because I never thought I was the best at anything. But for 15 years at Kansas, I thought I was the right man. In this time at North Carolina, I thought I was the right man. I no longer feel that I am the right man for the job.”
The fact UNC lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament with a record of 18-11 was only a contributing factor to his decision to retire. The COVID-19 pandemic also interfered with his ability to coach his 2021-22 team (such as an inability to get his players in summer school and have shoot-arounds with former UNC players).
Williams attributed COVID-19’s interference with normal operating procedures as a reason he thought he wasn’t the right man for the job in a September 2021 appearance on UNC’s “Carolina Insider” podcast.
“There’s no question, deep down inside, I really never wanted to retire,” Williams said at the time.
I wanted to win a championship and croak the next day and let that be it. People keep asking me why you did that and everything, and it’s exactly what I said: that I just didn’t feel like I was the right man for the job. Because I didn’t think I was doing as good a job as I’ve done in the past and I’ve had a hard time getting past that.
“I’ve never had that feeling of helplessness, and it just made me feel like I hadn’t done a very good job,” Williams said. “If you take away the COVID and you take away the Wisconsin game, I really do believe I’d still be sitting here. But I just felt like, ‘Did I coach this team at all? Did I accomplish anything at all?'”
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Williams’ doubt in his own abilities weren’t the only reason he wanted to move on from coaching.
Speaking with The Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy, Williams said he wanted to do what was best for his team. That meant moving on at a time where his successor, Davis, could seamlessly transition into the head-coaching role. The first-year coach had a hand in recruiting and developing the team that now finds itself in the Final Four.
“The more I delayed it, it made all of those things more difficult,” Williams told The Sporting News. “I really wanted to wait and do it a little later myself, for me personally. But if you’re talking about the next guy coming, it wasn’t going to be nearly as smooth if I waited longer.
This is not just where I coached. This is my school, where I lived and where our children went. So that was the biggest concern: trying to figure out a time to do it that would be most beneficial for our program. That’s the only thing I’ve ever thought of, my whole life, is what was the best thing for our program.
Check out The Sporting News’ exclusive sitdown interview with Roy Williams: