North Carolina Basketball: Roy Williams is what?

I have held back from commenting on the article by CBSSports.com that polled about 100 college basketball coaches to ask them who they thought the most over rated coach in the business is. The reason I waited to reply I will speak on later. Of course, if I am writing about this poll it must be that head coach Roy Williams is somewhere in the mix. Well, not only is he in the mix, the head man of the North Carolina basketball program was named by 23% of the coaches as the most over rated coach. The quote that was used in the article, written by Gary Parrish, was the following…

“He’s won at Kansas and UNC. But who couldn’t do that … besides Matt Doherty?”

Before I go on with my post let me just say that these anonymous polls are a bunch of baloney. Someone who wants to say such things should then have the courage to sign it. Way too easy to take pot shots, and not only at Roy Williams but all the coaches in this article, hiding behind the fact that no one will ever know who said what.

I might not know much about other programs, because I am a Tar Heel, but I do know plenty about North Carolina, again, because I am a Tar Heel, and to call coach Williams over rated is pretty close to absurd. Since he has been back in Chapel Hill he has won two national championships (`05 & `09), being just one of four active head coaches to have achieved such a feat. He’s been one of the quickest coaches to reach 600 wins, now has 675 wins in all, with a winning percentage of 80% in his 24 years between Kansas and UNC. He’s taken his teams to seven Final Four overall, four at KU and three at UNC, fourth ever among coaches, second among active and only coach ever to have taken two separate programs to three Final Fours. And of all the present and former head coaches that have reached 600 wins and have a winning percentage of 80%+ there are two, coach Williams and John Wooden, not a bad club to be part of.

I know that stats, which I could give you more and more of about the man that runs the North Carolina basketball program, can be used any way you want, so let’s look at the people that make or break a coach… the recruits. I do not believe that there is one player that believes that coach Williams is over rated, or they would not be coming to Chapel Hill. And of those that have come to UNC since the “over rated” coach has been there, ten have gone on to be a lottery pick in the National Basketball Association. Analysts, experts, main stream media, bloggers, fan bases can say what they want about any coach, but as the old saying goes “the proof is in the pudding”. And here the pudding is watching five star recruits and top ranked recruiting classes coming in each and every year. Coach Williams has done that for most of his 24 years as a head coach.

Is head coach Roy Williams perfect? Of course not. Has he reached every goal that he has set out for his team and himself? No, but what coach has? When you put Williams’ career on a balance, putting positives on one side and negatives on the other, the scale will be so one sided towards the successes that it’s not even close. For anyone to call the UNC head coach over rated is just not true, it’s truly disrespectful to a man who has done what most other head coaches in his business will never do.

Naysayers, haters and ABCers are going to have a ball with the article by CBS Sports, and I do not mind, because in the end at Chapel Hill we have the coach we want and I am just fine with it. As I said at the beginning of this post, I held back before writing about this because I did not want to be a homer when doing so. I believe I’ve done just that. So, maybe everyone can win at Chapel Hill, the reality is that probably most of those coaches that called Roy Williams over rated would never be called to coach there, and that alone makes head coach Roy Williams not over rated, but a class act that will be hard to follow. For more information about UNC basketball and/or football make sure to check back to isportsweb!