April 7th 2003:
I am brimming with confidence. We’ve just demolished Dwayne Wade’s Marquette team to get to the NCAA Championship Game, and I’m sitting in Des Moines, IA, the backyard of Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison, the refugees from Tim Floyd’s departure form Iowa State who were swooped up by Roy Williams to help bring him his elusive first NCAA title.
After valiantly falling to eventual champ Maryland the year before, it was our turn. The previous three champs were laden with senior leadership: Mateen Cleaves and Mo Peterson’s Michigan State squad in 2000, Shane Battier and Nate James’ 2001 Duke team and Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter’s previously mentioned 2002 Terrapins. Who were we playing in 2003? A Syracuse team who’s leading scorer was a freshman, and who had only one starting senior, Kueth Duany, a forward averaging a scant 11 pts and 3 rebs per game.
This was ours.
Two hours before the game, my brother picks me up, and we head to HyVee to grab some refreshments for the game. I couldn’t be more excited. My bro, like many of us, is a superstitious fellow; he’s been wearing the same KU shirt for each tourney game, but that shirt is conspicuously absent from his shoulders as I hop into his car.
“Dude,” he tells me, “You’ll never believe what happened.” Apparently his fiancé’s sister’s dog took a huge dump on his shirt that afternoon.
My first reaction is this.
My next is this.
With that, I knew…it was over. We would loose, and in heartbreaking fashion. It was after that game that my dad (an Illinois grad) clued me into the rumor that Roy would leave and would be replaced by the Fighting Illini’s Bill Self.
I still to this day don’t know how to feel about Roy Williams. I couldn’t really feel that much rage over him leaving for North Carolina. To be honest, I was more ticked about losing DeShawn Stevenson and Charlie Villanueva, recruits whose verbal commitments waved bye-bye along with Roy.
Roy had never been a Kansas guy. Like he said in his goodbye presser, he was a Tar Heel born and would be a Tar Heel dead…or something like that. Jayhawk fans should hold more animosity for Dean Smith – who grew up in Emporia, KS, who played under Phog Allen, who was a coach on the staff of the 1957 team that lost in triple overtime to North Carolina – for never coming home.
Then, two years ago, we exorcized the demons. We absolutely throttled Roy’s North Carolina team in the final four, and then with Roy (and his giant Jayhawk sticker) watching on, we won the title. I remember half of the KU fans assembled to watch the game booing Roy when he was interviewed at halftime wearing his allegiance to Kansas. I wondered why. We crucified the guy for the four-plus years since, and had just given him his pink slip from the tourney two nights earlier. The way I saw it, we could use all the help we could get to keep another group of upper-classmen from losing to a freshman phenom again.
Since then, I’ve been indifferent. I rooted for Michigan State against North Carolina in last year’s final, but out of rooting for the underdog, not because of some misplaced aggression toward Roy (or love for Tom Izzo, for that matter). I root against North Carolina because I want KU to be #1.
Before the season started, the three most storied college basketball programs in history (sorry Indiana, UCLA and Duke) were all within distance of 2,000 all-time wins. Kentucky, thanks to John Calipari, have already passed that milestone, doing so on Dec. 21st this season. Looking at the perceived strengths of UNC before the season started, there was no reason to believe that KU would reach that milestone before them.
Well…guess what…
UNC currently sits at 1997 wins with a 13-8 record this season.
KU currently sits at 1990 wins with a 20-1 record.
Say it with me:
Hey, Roy! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!