At one point he thought he wanted to be a head coach, but he also decided that he really enjoyed Coach Smith and the program here and why should he leave when he has what he thought was the perfect job., Bill was uniquely special. Hed have retired with a championship trophy, and then let someone else step right in, Ndiaye says. Coach Guthridge is the best I have ever seen in selecting potential in high school players, Smith once said, according to the teams website. Tim Crothers. And he said, Im not crying because we won. Some fans criticized Guthridge last season when the Tar Heels went through a four-game losing streak in January and entered the post-season with 13 losses. I remember telling the chancellor that, Baddour says. That Plan B, clearly, was Guthridge. His lack of recruiting is why they went 8-20 shortly thereafter. (Ford) goes, Ah, you wouldve seen it sooner or later. Yeah right. Had it worked out where there wasnt a down year or whatever, maybe things end up differently, Frederick says. Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. I wouldve gone to Roy.. But the Tar Heels advanced to the Final Four. Fast-forward to present day, and he has surpassed Smith in both national championships and wins. Only, given Guthridges age at the time (60) and the fact that hed always said hed retire when Smith did, Baddour wasnt totally sure Guthridge was interested. So why leave?, His dry sense of humor was legendary among his players. He led the program to a pair of Final Four appearances in three seasons at the helm before retiring following the 1999-2000 campaign. But he was also one of the most passionate members of the Carolina basketball family in the last 50 years, and was completely devoted to the Tar Heels, to Smith, and to the University of North Carolina. They made sure we knew it wasnt the most important thing in the world, but that we had been given a talent, and it was our job to use it., The Carolina community mourns the passing of Bill Guthridge, a great coach, devoted friend and loyal Tar Heel. Guthridge . One of the things that made (Smith) so special was his ability to be innovative so certainly, I think we would have had some other ways to attack in a game that we struggled, against Utah in the Final Four.. Go play golf. The Tar Heels either won the ACC tournament or finished atop the league standings -- or did both -- in 23 of those seasons. He wasnt going to entertain a room full of boosters with behind the scenes stories. Thank you Coach Gut for the many lessons you taught us at UNC. He was a perfect sidekick for Coach Smith. "When Coach Smith announced he was retiring and that Coach Guthridge was taking over, then it all clicked into place for me," Hanners says. 33 yrs on UNC bench. I really believe thats exactly what happened.. Later during that conversation, I suggested to Smith that he still had a lot of quality coaching mileage left and that maybe he should consider returning for an encore. In 1998, Guthridge inherited a team that had been to the 1997 Final Four the previous year under Smith. That includes two as a head coach at Carolina, 10 as a Tar Heel assistant coach and one each as a player and assistant coach at his alma mater, Kansas State. "I'd always set my time to GST, 10 minutes ahead.". Smith and Guthridge had long maintained they'd. After 36 years as the coach at North Carolina, it kept trickling down, grain by grain. He competed in one as a player at Kansas State in 1958, was an assistant coach at 11 before directing the Tar Heels at two as head coach. That not-wanting-to-step-on-toes thing? Lets say youve got a 35-year-old guy. He was a friend. He tried to do every one of those little things that drove Coach Smith crazy. The Blue Sky Scholars Program gives scholarship support to middle-income parents and students from North Carolina. He also was an assistant to Smith on the 1976 U.S. Olympic team that won the gold medal in Montreal. Seeded eighth in the South region, North Carolina upset top-seeded Stanford in the second round and continued to the Final Four, where they lost to Florida. Bill Guthridge was consistently portrayed as a quiet gentleman. Guthridge did it all with a dry wit and style. I really liked the attitude of the team, the way they worked hard and how they were rewarded finally. That season, he led the Tar Heels to a 34-4 record and the final No. Carolina Jump Rope is making their fellow Tar Heel rethink what it means to jump rope. When coach Smith retired in 1997, after a tenure of 36 season, Guthridge took over the job to begin a reign of great basketball playing at UNC. That image of Guthridge is accurate but not complete. Frederick said he wanted to emphasize to Williams how strongly the university, the community, the people in the state of Kansas and all of our alumni and fans feel about him continuing as the Jayhawk coach forever.. He formed a successful partnership with Dean Smith that lasted three decades until Smith retired in 1997. Making the Final Four is a tremendous accomplishment but its not what you chase. Spend time with family. Guthridge, who like Smith was a. Hed told reporters he expected to honor the remaining four years on his deal. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. The university made a huge misstep when it hired former UNC player, Matt Doherty, a young, untested coach in the league of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and a 180-degreechange from the coaching styles of Coach Smith and Coach Guthridge, as its head basketball coach in 2000, when Coach Guthridge retired. 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He stepped down 2 months later. Conference regular season champion Theyd had their disagreements, yes. He was a lifetime assistant coach for whom Dean did a solid. The Kansas native took over the role of head coach following Smith's departure. "This is a tremendous loss for our basketball program and entire community.". 1 team in America. But Guthridge, who died Tuesday at 77 of heart failure, was not just one of the best college basketball coaches of all time, he was an unfailingly decent man who displayed a rare degree of. So was Williams always fated to end up back at North Carolina? Guthridge became head coach after Smith retired in 1997 and coached the team for three seasons.UNC coach Roy Williams called Guthridge a key . In other words, why Smith walked away at the exact moment he did. Guthridge was the head coach of the Tar Heels for three seasons following Dean Smith's retirement in 1997. Bill Guthridge is best known in Chapel Hill as an assistant coach to Dean Smith, but that isn't the complete picture of the legendary coach. Guthridge was completely committed to Carolina basketball, and he wanted to make sure everyone else in the program felt the same way. But I already had a better job than that and I was happy here. One of his most tempestuous relationships had been with guard Shammond Williams, who even walked off the court at Virginia on one occasion. On June 30th in 1969, Bill Russell announced his retirement from professional basketball after a 13-year NBA career. Baddour says he never got that far down the line because of Guthridges interest. Its hard, man. Guthridge was involved in a total of fourteen Final Fours as either a player or coach, more than any other person in historyone each as a player and assistant at Kansas State, ten as a North Carolina assistant, and two as North Carolina head coach. When did Bill Guthridge coach at UNC? Smith wanted longtime assistant Bill Guthridge (age 60 at the time) to be a head coach and enjoy the competitive and financial rewards of the job. In his first year as head coach, he led the the team . It has to be one of those., Williams talked Thursday night with Kansas athletic director Bob Frederick. At which point, Baddour faced as unenviable a position as any athletic director in the country: Who do you hire to fill Dean Smiths shoes? In five years on Winter's staff, Guthridge helped lead the Wildcats to a 9343 (.684) record, a pair of Big Eight Conference crowns, and the NCAA Final Four in 1964. Guthridge coached that team to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship, a school record-tying 34 wins (including 30 wins going into the NCAA Tournament the most in school history at the time) and an appearance in the Final Four, where they lost to Utah. If he had, then thats where the what-ifs really go wild. For what? With Williams, it was the restoration of the family, three national championships and potentially many more years. A Tar Heel passing him in the hallway might greet him with a quick head nod and a greeting of, Coach. Guthridge would invariably respond with a similar head nod and, Player.. Guthridge would still call on Smith, after all, to speak to the team at certain times. He played or coached in 14 Final Fours, more than any person in NCAA history. Only different alternate realities. Suggestion to Return DismissedWhen Guthridge retired after leading his third team to another Final Four, I interviewed Smith about the amazingly long and successful partnership the two coaches -- Smith a Kansas grad and Guthridge from Kansas State -- had enjoyed. He spurned offers to interview for head coaching vacancies, preferring to remain out of the spotlight and continuing to team with Smith. Williams famously turned him down, opting to remain at Kansas, where hed built a Carolina-esque family dynamic (at Smiths alma mater, to boot). Former UNC coach, assistant Guthridge dies, Sizing up the player of the year winners in all 32 Division I men's conferences, Tide's Oats takes blame for Miller's 'TSA' intro, Davis within 25 points of tying Maravich's mark, New NCAA president readies for NIL, legal issues, Scheyer makes history as Duke sweeps at home, Tennessee win soured by knee injury to Zeigler, USC, OU, Seton Hall, Iowa in new hoops tourney, Houston, Alabama remain atop AP Top 25 poll. But in hindsight, Hanners says there were clues that everything might not have been like normal. He led his first team to the 1998 Final Four and had two players, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison, selected in the top five . 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