But the Tar Heels advanced to the Final Four. He led his first team to the 1998 Final Four and had two players, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison, selected in the top five picks of the NBA draft. The picture most Tar Heel fans will have of him is sitting slightly behind Dean Smith, perhaps leaning over to make a point to the head coach. On Oct. 9, 1997, Smith called it quits. In other words, why Smith walked away at the exact moment he did. Former UNC Coach Bill Guthridge passed away last night at age 77 w/ family at his side. when UNC named longtime assistant Bill Guthridge as his successor. Guthridge was criticized last season by alumni and fans for losing five games at home the most since World War II and for a record that dropped to 18-13 after a first-round defeat in the Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament. North Carolina athletic director Dick Baddour has refused to comment directly on Guthridge's contract, saying the school's board of trustees discourages him from talking publicly about such personnel issues. The University is currently operating under normal conditions. "I'm not up with it," Guthridge said at one point, when he tried to remember taking over as UNC's head coach in 1997 after Smith retired. "Though he was a head coach for a short time, he gracefully carried on a culture and legacy that many thought could not be perpetuated.". (LogOut/ Guthridge didn't bother to recruit Jason Williams,. Perhaps, at last, somewhere in his mind, Coach Guthridge finally made the decision it was time for him to retire from this physical life. Its often forgotten that he helped engineer the 2000 Final Four run by keeping his team in Charlotte overnight after a disappointing quarterfinal ACC Tournament loss, and pushing them hard in practice on Saturday. Coach Smith would be more likely to draw up something in a timeout, or draw up a play maybe we hadnt worked on, where as Coach Guthridge was going to rely on what wed done in the past, says Brad Frederick, a forward on that team and now a UNC assistant coach. 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. The Tar Heels finished first or tied for first in the ACC regular season 16 times, finished second or tied for second in the ACC regular season 11 times and finished third or tied for third in the ACC regular season six times. He was like Coach Guthridge in that both of them loved and bled Carolina blue so much that they never wanted to leave the program.. He said to me, I have felt this way before, but in the early fall, Ive always gotten the energy back, and I expect that thats gonna happen, but I do want to alert you to the possibility that it might not. Whether or not deep down inside he thought that energy wouldnt come back, I dont know the answer to that. Bill Guthridge was consistently portrayed as a quiet gentleman. I want to spend the weekend thinking about it. Thats impossible to know, but Williams was also returning a top-five team, one that was expected to compete for a championship in its own right. And by the end of every summer, Smith returned freshly rejuvenated. A source close to the basketball program, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Thursday that Guthridge recently decided he did not have the energy to continue coaching the Tar Heels. Coach Guthridge made his retirement official on May 13, 2015. 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. The team bus never left at 2 p.m. He needed to hear that from Guthridge. People could misinterpret 2 p.m.perhaps it really meant 1:45, or maybe 2:15. He previously worked at The Charlotte Observer as a Carolina Panthers beat reporter, and his writing has also appeared in Sports Illustrated, The Boston Globe and The Baltimore Sun. One year against Laurinburg, Hanners squad was down about 18 with under nine minutes to play; suddenly, he felt Ford come up behind him. He played or coached in 14 Final Fours, more than any person in NCAA history. Bill Guthridge, who led North Carolina to two Final Four appearances in his three seasons as coach of the Tar Heels, will announce his retirement at a news conference Friday, The Associated Press has learned. 3 "The End of Absence" Michael Harris. If Williams had said no, then who might have been offered the job? The team performs dazzling spins and flips at campus events and even competes against other universities and jump rope clubs from around the country. Unfortunately, it took UNC two tries to find that leader. What you saw was the quiet assistant sitting on the bench. Which put Baddour on the search for a long-term replacement for the first time. I mean, the Plan B was there.. He was on the sidelines for a record 73 NCAA Tournament victories, including 71 at Carolina and two at Kansas State. Buffalo Brothers - 1/2 Price Appetizers 4:30pm-6:00pm Monday - Friday, Holliday: State and Carolina headed in different directions for the final two weeks, Brownlow: Angst will be at an all-time high as NC State hosts hated rival UNC, Holliday: Miami puts the Heels back on the bubble, Brownlow: NC State, Duke and UNC all seek to avoid two losses in a row as crunch time hits, Holliday: Pivotal road trips for NC State and Duke, Brownlow: Saturday's matchup marks the beginning of a new Carolina-Duke era, Holliday: Could this be Keatts' best ACC season? And so those players, all of them, kick around the questions to this day. But it was as if the whole contraption was tilted, resting at an incline so that the sand would never get to the bottom. 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.. Bill Guthridge was a gentleman coach, but a fierce competitor, and an incredibly loyal member of Dean Smiths staff for three decades, said UNC Director of Athletics Bubba Cunningham. The closest he came to leaving Chapel Hill was 1978, when he verbally accepted the head coaching job at Penn State. And then Bill can decide along the way what he wants to do.. However, Coach Guthridge served as the perfect replacement as head basketball coach when Coach Smith unexpectantly announced his retirement from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997. If I were to call Roy and ask Roy was he interested, the first question out of his mouth wouldve been, did Bill get a chance? Baddour says. Veteran sports reporter Peter Gammons had high praise for the former coach: Saddened to learn Bill Guthridge passed away. Fords reputation was growing fast as a star recruiter, having single-handedly delivered Rasheed Wallace to UNC and playing a major role in Carters eventual commitment. The first is, if Guthridge hadnt wanted the job, would Williams have taken it? And that brings us full-circle, back to the original what-if: What if Dean Smith had finished out his contract, which ran through the end of the 2000-01 season? Smith wrote in his memoir, A Coachs Life, that before he retired in 1997, he told recruits: If Im not coaching, I am confident that your coach will be either Bill Guthridge, Eddie Fogler, Roy Williams, Larry Brown, George Karl or Phil Ford, not necessarily in that order. School officials stressed that Guthridge was not merely a placeholder for then-Kansas coach Roy Williams, signing him to a five-year contract. Together, they taught us basketball is secondary. But when Baddour and Guthridge did finally meet, Guthridge expressed a desire to try his hand. The Tar Heels then went 24-10 in 1998-99 but were upset by Weber State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Copyright 2013 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. They shot just 39.1 percent from the floor and made only 3-of-23 attempts from 3. But the season, and that loss specifically, never faded from their collective consciousness. The emotion was there, its just that it was often Guthridge providing it. "He was my coach, he was another mentor. With Williams, it was the restoration of the family, three national championships and potentially many more years. He never called me at home, unless it was something dire, Hanners says, but he said, How would you feel about meeting me in the office early on Monday at 7 to go over some things before everyone gets there? Hanners obliged, trying to ease Guthridges feeling that he was somewhat out of touch. That season, he led the Tar Heels to a 34-4 record and the final No. The possibilities were endless, but Baddour is certain of one thing: keeping things in the family was a must. That said, its worth remembering that he told Williams just a few years ago that perhaps 66 was too early to retire, given his near flawless health at the time. Guthridge was completely committed to Carolina basketball, and he wanted to make sure everyone else in the program felt the same way. 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. As a coach, he was stubbornly competitive. Had it worked out where there wasnt a down year or whatever, maybe things end up differently, Frederick says. Penn State was a good situation, he said in an interview in 2010. But 1:57 was 1:57. He also was head golf coach for the Wildcats. Ndiaye even tried cracking the ice by joking that Guthridges years as head coach probably hadnt hurt his wallet. "This is a tremendous loss for our basketball program and entire community.". Guthridge said he took a vacation in Europe in May, hoping to recharge, but wasnt able to. Of course, its not like UNC had a bad season in Guthridges first year. He set NCAA records for most wins by a first-year head coach with 34, and for wins in his first two years with 58. If Bill Guthridge doesnt look familiar to you as a UNC-Chapel Hill head basketball coach, theres a very good reason for that. As an assistant, Guthridge was renowned for his success in coaching the fundamentals of pivot play to a long series of successful UNC big men, and as the Tar Heels' primary shooting coach. I would have been as vigorous and go after that as hard as I could possibly go.. He wasnt going to entertain a room full of boosters with behind the scenes stories. The next day, Kenny Smith said, assistant coach Bill Guthridge wasn't at practice. Bill Guthridge, who led North Carolina to two Final Four appearances in his three seasons as basketball coach of the Tar Heels, will announce his retirement today, the Associated Press reported. The next season, North Carolina earned a #3 seed in the West regional of the NCAA tournament, but was upset in the first round by Weber State in a late game in Seattle. The little doo-doos, Smith called them, the administrative tasks just within the purview of his job responsibilities. Guthridge was a player and then an assistant coach at Kansas State before joining the Tar Heels staff in 1967. In his 33 seasons at Carolina, the Tar Heels won two NCAA championships, in 1982 and 1993; played in 12 Final Fours; won the ACC Tournament championship 13 times; and played in the ACC Tournament championship game a total of 22 times. 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