Dec. 6, 2003

Roy Williams will be dressed out Sunday afternoon in something from Alexander Julian that's Carolina blue. For the past 15 years he wore a different shade of blue with a little red (ugh!)to complement it. However, could you possibly imagine him wearing green and gold? It almost happened when he was seeking his first collegiate head coaching position.

Williams actually had several head coaching opportunities during the ten years he served on Dean Smith's staff between 1978 and 1988.

In 1985, Furman was looking to replace Jere Davis, a former Bob Knight assistant, after three straight losing seasons, and Williams was invited for an interview. Asked what he would do if he didn't get the job, he told the search committee, "I'll just go back to being an assistant at North Carolina, which is a pretty good job!" That's exactly what he did when the Paladins decided to hire Butch Estes, another UNC graduate.

The following year, Charlie Carr, a former athletic administrator at Carolina, was looking for a new basketball coach at Mississippi State where he had moved in 1985 as athletic director. Williams went for another interview even though he never felt the situation was a good fit. The Bulldogs eventually hired Richard Williams to replace Bob Boyd.

In the spring of 1988, George Mason called and wanted to talk with Roy Williams. The Patriots were trying to replace Rick Barnes. The same Rick Barnes who would coach later at Clemson and Texas. He had stayed only one year at the Fairfax, Virginia, school, and posted a 20-10 record before bolting for Providence.

"I did go and talk with them," Williams remembers, "and, evidently I did okay. The athletic director called back and told me he wanted me to be their head coach. He called me on a Thursday morning, and said he wanted to come down on Saturday to dot the i's and cross the t's on the contract."

The George Mason president was out of the country, but he would return Sunday and then Roy and Wanda could fly up that evening for his formal introduction as the school's new head basketball coach on Monday. It seemed fine, but it didn't feel right.

"I couldn't sleep Thursday or Friday night," he recalled. "I just didn't feel good about it. Saturday morning at six o'clock I got up and called the George Mason athletic director before he left for Chapel Hill. I told him I couldn't do it. I was going to stay at Carolina."

After he hung up there was another person Roy Williams had to call. "I waited a few hours because Coach Smith didn't get up at six o'clock very many times. So I finally talked to him later that morning and told him he was stuck with me because I had decided not to take the job at George Mason.

"He wanted to know how I felt, and I told him I was so relieved. Then he told me it was the right decision. He said, 'Just keep being patient. Something better is going to come along.'"

The Patriots wound up taking former Wake Forest assistant Ernie Nestor, who stayed five years before he was replaced by Paul Westhead. Nestor returned to Wake Forest and worked ten years with Dave Odom before being named this year as the new head coach at Elon University. Westhead was eventually replaced in 1997 by former Virginia assistant Jim Larranaga, who'll be on the Patriot bench Sunday afternoon wearing the green and gold.

Less than three months after saying no to George Mason, Roy Williams became the head coach at Kansas.