Roy Williams is awesome, baby, with a capital 'A.' --Dick Vitale As he
traveled across the state of North Carolina in the summer of 2003, Roy
Williams delivered a repetitive refrain to the thousands of University
of North Carolina basketball fans who packed his public appearances: Ol'
Roy ain't that good. Carolina fans didn't care to hear it, because they
firmly believed that ol' Roy was, indeed, more than good--he was great.
He was the prodigal son who served as Dean Smith's assistant coach,
turned down the Carolina job in 2000, and finally accepted it in April
of 2003. Williams became the Tar Heels's head coach after fifteen
spectacular years at Kansas, and the immediate expectation was that he
would find similar success in Chapel Hill, a once-proud program that had
stumbled under former head coach Matt Doherty. But Williams knew
something that it would take casual fans months to realize: Teaching the
team of moody basketball players to play winning basketball would be
about much more than simply what happened on the court. Williams had
established a successful program at Kansas by connecting with the
players he had recruited over their four-year careers. At Carolina, he
had less than twelve months to turn a group of talented individuals into
a basketball team that could function at the highest level of NCAA
competition--the Atlantic Coast Conference. Going Home Again is the
story of Roy Williams's first season as North Carolina's head basketball
coach. Author Adam Lucas takes you inside the locker room and behind the
scenes with the nation's most revered basketball program, providing a
rare glimpse into the inner workings of one of the country's most
secretive college sports dynasties.
