There were rumblings about this awhile back with something his father had said. Now it appears it is happening.
Williams is leaving Duke for family medical reasons and will attempt to transfer near his home in Memphis, TN. This is not unlike what former Tar Heel Alex Stepheson did at the end of last season. Like Stepheson, Williams will attempt to get a waiver so he can play right away instead of waiting a year as is customary for transfers. Stepheson had his request denied.
Regardless of rivarly you hope and pray things work out for Williams.
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Of course I hope everything works out for Williams, as for duke…well I can’t say I’m upset.
Duke owned, who’ll play point?
Bobby couldn’t get a waiver – Alex couldn’t – what’s the deal? Why is the NCAA so mean to the unpaid players making it obscene amounts of money? Seriously.
Even if the guy is playing for a rival, I’d never wish any personal misfortune on anyone, and hope this works out.
19-20 years old should not be allowed to change their minds, dont you know ? It’s a shame the NCAA is what we are stuck with…
definitely has to be serious to leave Duke. hope it works out.
i would imagine the PG job is Scheyer’s again. he’ll be adequate, maybe even a bit better, but he can never be 6-footer quick. they’ll be jumping out at opposing point guards, and either getting burned by others or not.
Sometimes I wonder how we really feel in terms of the rivalry and reality.
If Coach K is simply the Duke version of Dean Smith or Roy Williams, then I expect that we feel sorry for any young man who is unable to experience four years of such great basketball teaching and moral training at Duke. Obviously, the education at Duke is superb and unlikely to be duplicated “somewhere near Memphis.” Perhaps somewhere near Nashville, yes, it can be.
However, I question whether many UNC fans really feel this way about K. I think many UNC fans feel that people like Calipari, Billy Donavan and Coach K somehow “fool” players into going to their schools.
I have a good friend in the coaching business who grew up a UNC fan and he says that Coach K is topnotch in almost every way and has treated him at coaching seminars and via public invitations at Duke, even better than UNC has. This is just one person’s experience but it did surprise me to hear that from someone who grew up loving UNC basketball but did not end up attending Carolina.
I guess from my own point of view, I react badly to Coach K’s much acknowledged crude behavior and language. That is not how I would want my son to behave in public, and that aspect frankly colors just about everything about the man for me. I see him as a milder version of Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight.
I don’t really have any other basis to dislike him, I guess. He doesn’t seem to cheat. He does have a lot of transfers but the players that stay seem to be pretty decent people, like Jay Bilas, Danny Ferry, Grant Hill, J.J. Redick and Shane Battier. He is a Republican, but he is no more political than Dean Smith was, maybe less so.
Honestly, I may be starting to feel about K, the way that NC State always accuses UNC people of feeling when we defend other coaches like Sendek. I kind of would like to see him stay at Duke a long time since he arguably, might be underperforming in terms of winning there since 2004. He has never had commensurate success against UNC, with his success against virtually all other schools, (with the possible exception of Gary Williams’ Maryland years) compared to what he has done against everyone else.
I think it is fairly probable that had Tom Izzo or Rick Pitino taken over for K in 2004, the last time that Duke should have won it all–(which makes at least three years in my estimation, 1986, 1999 and 2004 where Duke had the best team in the Final Four and lost)–that Duke would have had more success during the past five years, both on the court, and in terms of recruiting.
Maybe coaching the national team has had an effect, but the last five years for K have been very much like the 1988-1993 period that Dean Smith experienced before winning his second title. Decent, but not for Carolina and not for Duke, not anymore.
And obviously, the last five years for UNC have been the greatest in school history, outdoing Smith’s 1981-1985 stretch of 1 title, 2 finals, 3 Final Fours and 2 Final Eights, during this difficult era when players don’t stay even the 3 years necessarily that Worthy and Jordan did.
So, the parallels are almost spooky. In the same way that Smith was counted out back in 1992 and rose back to the top of the conference after being surpassed by the younger K’s incredible 6 year run from 1986 through 1992, K now finds himself in the same position. But, I think the big difference is that Smith never lost his recruiting parity with Duke and I am not sure that K can make the same claim vis-a-vis his younger rival.
Williams brought a strong defensive presence as well. William, if you’re reading, you may want statistical references, but all I can say is that Dook went on a nice little winning streak when K put him in the starting lineup. Perhaps a coincidence and nothing more, perhaps not.
I wonder what The Rat says behind closed doors, you know? I mean, on the outside he’ll play nice and all, but you know he has to be thinking “Oh $#%!.”
Actually, it was a Sweet 16 and not a Final Four in 1984, to the chagrin of us all.
excellent post william. I’ve heard much the same of him. it would really be interesting to hear his views on how (with the perspective of age) he now views his rivalries. hell, even Knight has mellowed a bit.
I was looking for another quote but I did find this citation about K’s relations with some former players:
http://books.google.com/books?id=6jzQtq7nLeMC&pg=PA308&lpg=PA308&dq=williams+k+kansas+duke+carolina+ass&source=bl&ots=F071ewnmQa&sig=Dcb4YnufuwbWHmtn6tlvtC5zXOc&hl=en&ei=vGVCStmUOKmxtgevyPCbCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7
I think the one thing about K mellowing that has to be taken with a grain of salt is his infamous, alleged shouted quote to Roy Williams during a game between Kansas and Duke back in the early part of this millenium when K promised to kick Williams’ ass if he ever dared to come coach at UNC.
Well.
Virtually every alpha dog mellows when he is no longer on top.
K made an obnoxious boast and he hasn’t come close to fulfilling it. He doesn’t even have a winning record against UNC in general, but that obnoxious promise was made pretty close to Duke’s ultimate height and UNC’s bottom, so it seemed like a fairly safe thing to shout in public during an NCAA tourney game.
Now after the twin Villanova results this year thoroughly humiliated K and his program, pretty much the only thing that is helping maintain K’s stature among coaches is a slender victory over Spain in the Olympics. If K is going to make a move back towards winning a final title and making himself second or third to Wooden and Rupp, he better get going.
As long as Duke is Duke, meaning the top arch-rival for UNC basketball, and coach K is leading Duke, I have absolutely no sense of fondness to the man. I respect the background from which he came, what he has done and built there, but that is it.
When or if he reaches that pinnacle again, which I hope not, count on another flippin’ book coming out. I think there is an under-current of arrogance, carefully concealed it may be, that is revealed by the varying commercial series and the Sirius radio show.
I wonder deep down if Alex is thinking “gosh just one more year”.
dook sucks. K sucks. ’nuff said.
“Virtually every alpha dog mellows when he is no longer on top.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEVJyf0ft3I
virtually being the key word…
doesn’t the music add just the right touch lol?
ha, great find 52. Woody…you just a crazy man
william’s post reminded me of a post i made elsewhere back during the tournament. the topic was why we hate our rival. its more than about K, but he’s in there. and since he controls how his team plays and to a great extent the program into even the radio broadcasts, he’s accountable, i say:
every fanbase has those blowhards in it. you kinda have to ignore those people on both sides.
here are my top reasons for hating Dook.
*98% of Dook “fans” root only for men’s basketball.
–i’m an alumnus of UNC, and i attended hoops of both sexes, soccer of both sexes, volleyball, baseball, field hockey, track and field, football, the occasional swim meet. since leaving school, i’ve attended football, basketball(both), soccer, volleyball. Dook fans cherrypick their teams.
*98% of Dook “fans” have zero connection to the university.
*Dook radio. Is there a more blatantly biased radio crew? at least Woody and Eric ATTEMPT some objectivity. and speaking of zero connection, Matthew Lawrence, of Dook radio. D-list “actor” who latched on to K at golf events.
*Duke’s fake old campus. way to copy Oxford and the like. try a school thats ACTUALLY over 200 years old, UNC.
*Duke’s copied Chapel. with its Duke family sarcophogi in the entrance. with lids in the likenesses of the occupants. like yourself much?
*K. foulmouthed during game, all warm and fuzzy, “great kids” in press conferences.
*Dook basketball style. grabbing, clutching, drawing charges directly under the basket. faking you got hit in the head when you got hit in the chest, if you even GOT hit. falling like a sniper victim when no one hits you on a 3 attempt. play with some honor, how bout? when you can’t play legitimate D, push the letter of the rules, i guess. as Pitino and now LAETTNER are on record saying, refs won’t be able to call everything.
there ya go.
To be fair, there are plenty of “Walmart” UNC fans who pretty much only follow basketball who correspond with all the New Jersyites who probably think Durham is near East Rutherford.
With the exception of baseball, it seems like UNC and Duke tend to be good in a lot of the same sports, basketball, lacrosse, soccer, field hockey, etc.
You are right about Duke’s campus being somewhat faux. I remember being told that the Duke family tried to “buy” Princeton but were rebuffed. I don’t suppose it is any different from Carnegie Mellon, Vanderbilt or Stanford though. None of these schools is very old. I would guess that Vanderbilt and Stanford are older than Duke though, which I believe dates from the 20′s, unless you count Trinity College.
As for Duke’s defense, Bob Staak at Wake called it “f’ing great defense. Five guys fouling all the time and never getting called for it.”
And I do think it is ethically wrong to teach kids to fake falling down to draw a charge. It is the same as taking a dive in soccer to get a penalty kick.
Finally, judging by today’s soccer result, beating Spain in Olympic basketball doesn’t seem nearly as spectacular as taking down the number one soccer team in the world when it has a chance to set an international win record.
(someone REALLY likes soccer)
well, this is huge–I guarantee you william came up off the couch a time or two. and ftr, they look crisp early–what many of us have been hoping and expecting of this team.
Hard to believe after they got smacked around by Costa Rica, Italy and Brazil in the last couple of weeks. Spain is very, very good. Soccer can be like that sometimes.
yep-Spain is really great at creating chances in the box–Davio Villa (sp?) is plain scary!
btw–just by co-incidence Phil Wheddon is down here in Pinehurst this week conducting a keeper camp. Phil was the trainer for Tim Howard, who had an outstanding match yesterday. I thought the US defense was the best I’ve seen out of them. Bradley was Johnny-on-the-spot several times last night.
tell em what they win Don: most likely Brazil