Before their first-round exit in 2021, this was the only time that the Tar Heels failed to win a game in the tournament since it expanded to 64 teams (and dropped first-round byes) in 1985. He has saved many scholarships when he has suggested backing off certain players, and of course, has selected some great ones who matriculated at Chapel Hill., UNC coach Bill Guthridge gives instructions during a game in the 99-00 season. The fact that he felt like he failed us.. What Smith left behind was arguably the most talented team hed ever assembled: a pair of future NBA All-Stars, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison; the programs all-time assists leader, point guard Ed Cota; a lights-out shooter, Shammond Williams; a frontcourt enforcer, Makhtar Ndiaye; and much more. And had Smith gone until age 71 or 72, as did Kentuckys Adolph Rupp, Carolina would have won another 50-60 games and the transition to Roy Williams might have happened seamlessly. Carolina Jump Rope is making their fellow Tar Heel rethink what it means to jump rope. He wouldve been gone. Had Smith made the logical move and coached on until his 70th birthday -- the route likely to be taken by Dukes Mike Krzyzewski (66) and Syracuses Jim Boeheim (68) -- he would have finished with at least 1,000 wins and possibly two more national titles. 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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. He once told a newspaper he never left the program because the other 300 Division I head coaching jobs werent better than his job as an assistant. 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. He directed UNC to the 1998 Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament championship and was named the ACC Coach of the Year. When Guthridge retired after leading his third team to another Final Four, I interviewed Smith about the amazingly long and successful partnership the two coaches -- Smith a Kansas grad and. Guthridge coached that team to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship, a school record-tying 34 wins (including 30 wins going into the NCAA Tournament the most in school history at the time) and an appearance in the Final Four, where they lost to Utah. But 1:57 was 1:57. That season, he led the Tar Heels to a 34-4 record and the final No. Spend time with family. In his first year as head coach, he led the the team . After graduating from Kansas State, he coached at Scott City High School in Kansas for two seasons before returning to his alma mater as an assistant coach for Tex Winter from 19621967. 1 team in America. But if Williams had said no, as he did two years later, would Ford have been tapped for the job then? Conference regular season champion Guthridge was a player and then an assistant coach at Kansas State before joining the Tar Heels staff in 1967. Coach Guthridge was the right choice to lead the transition to another, younger leader of the famed basketball program at the University of North Carolina. We offer our deepest condolences to the Guthridge family as they grieve the loss of a wonderful husband and father.. However, it was Coach Guthridges incurable heart condition that led to his development of vascular dementia, and with its progression, his placement for the last several years in a Chapel Hill assisted living facility. He held a news conference in the bowels of the Dean Smith Center, where he announced his retirement from the game hed given his life to. That team reached the Final Four and almost reached the title game even though Jamison and Williams missed 22 field-goal attempts in a 65-59 semifinal loss to Utah. He was no different from Coach Smith or Coach Guthridge. He joined the UNC staff in 1967 after five years as assistant to Tex Winter at Kansas State. A relatively quiet man with a wonderful and dry sense of humor. In his tenure at UNC, Guthridge coached five National Players of the Year, six ACC Players of the Year, five ACC Rookies of the Year and 28 first-team All-ACC players. Its not fair, but thats just the way it is for assistant coaches, Smith said. When did Bill Guthridge coach at UNC? Smith wanted longtime assistant Bill Guthridge (age 60 at the time) to be a head coach and enjoy the competitive and financial rewards of the job. He had recently been in an assisted living facility in Chapel Hill. You come up one year, and that year you win the national championship. I enjoyed my 30 years as an assistant coach, and Ive enjoyed my three years as a head coach.. As he would prepare for a basketball practice or game, he was equally intense about attention to detail in scheduling or whatever.. Theres no right answer, no certainty. And so even as the coachs hair changed from dark brown to gray to white, his position never did. He led his first team to the 1998 Final Four and had two players, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison, selected in the top five . With Williams, it was the restoration of the family, three national championships and potentially many more years. Later during that conversation, I suggested to Smith that he still had a lot of quality coaching mileage left and that maybe he should consider returning for an encore. The first is, if Guthridge hadnt wanted the job, would Williams have taken it? Guthridge's did, too, and during Smith's funeral and memorial services, Williams, knowing the end could be near, told former players and current ones to spend time with Guthridge. That team still went 34-4, losing to Utah in the Final Four. Just a really good man who made Carolina, the ACC and college basketball better.. In retrospect, Smiths premature exit was a mistake on all fronts. In fact, Guthridge has been involved with 13 teams which have reached the Final Four-as a player at Kansas State in 1958, as an assistant coach with the Wildcats in 1964, as a Tar Heel assistant coach in 1968, 1969, 1972, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997, and as UNC's head coach in 1998.. Did Musselman coach in the NBA? Guthridge would still call on Smith, after all, to speak to the team at certain times. We ended up beating em easily, and I thanked him later for it, Hanners says. He stayed (rather than leave for a head coaching job at another university) because he was enjoying what he was doing and why leave something you know is good for the unknown. But theres also the fact that Dean did it his way, which was entirely predictable. He was known to answer a question such as Coach, do you know what time it is? with a Yes as he walked away. 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. North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball head coaches, North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball 198182 NCAA champions, North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball 199293 NCAA champions, Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball Coach of the Year, Learn how and when to remove this template message, List of NCAA Division I Men's Final Four appearances by coach, http://static.espn.go.com/ncb/news/2000/0630/612432.html, http://www.heraldsun.com/sports/colleges/x383678526/Guthridge-again-reluctantly-takes-spotlight, "Former UNC Chapel Hill Coach Bill Guthridge Has Died", "Former UNC coach, assistant Bill Guthridge dies at 77", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bill_Guthridge&oldid=1115268631, College men's basketball head coaches in the United States, Kansas State Wildcats men's basketball coaches, Kansas State Wildcats men's basketball players, North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball coaches, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty, Articles with dead external links from February 2018, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles needing cleanup from September 2022, Articles with bare URLs for citations from September 2022, All articles with bare URLs for citations, Articles covered by WikiProject Wikify from September 2022, All articles covered by WikiProject Wikify, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 10 October 2022, at 16:39. Only in Chapel Hill would a two-time Final Four coach, an Atlantic Coast Conference champion, and a consensus National Coach of the Year award winner be best known as an assistant. Had McAdoo returned, Smiths team would have been much better positioned to deal with David Thompsons stunning impact on NC State, the ACC and the nation. Without question, every opportunity that I would have to hire Roy Williams. "If he told me to run through that wall to make me better, I'd hit that wall," former North Carolina player and well-traveled college coach Buzz Peterson told The Associated Press. His legacy lives on in each of the players who were privileged to call him Coach and countless Tar Heels and people across the nation who admired him. That was quelled, but the chancellor had another thought: To the chancellor and many fans Williams was the obvious choice to succeed Smith. The little doo-doos got him in the end, Hanners says. Suggestion to Return DismissedWhen Guthridge retired after leading his third team to another Final Four, I interviewed Smith about the amazingly long and successful partnership the two coaches -- Smith a Kansas grad and Guthridge from Kansas State -- had enjoyed. It was the 14th time Guthridge participated in the Final Four. I would lean a little bit toward the side of Bill saying, Look, Im not on the front end of my career, its great to have done this, what a way to go out, Baddour says. "We'd always say there were so many time zones -- Eastern Standard Time, Central Standard Time -- but the most important was GST: Guthridge Standard Time," Peterson said. Note: Former University of North Carolina mens basketball coach Bill Guthridge passed away May 12. He tried to do every one of those little things that drove Coach Smith crazy. He has a keen sense of which ones will be very good players and which ones may be overrated. He formed a successful partnership with Dean Smith that lasted three decades until Smith retired in 1997. Guthridge, 62, said a few weeks ago that he planned to stay on another five or six years. Guthridge took over when Smith retired after 36 seasons in October 1997. in education in 1963. He was on the sidelines for a record 73 NCAA Tournament victories, including 71 at Carolina and two at Kansas State. If you played for him you loved him; working with him was a joy. Hed have been a lifer, Hanners says. The team performs dazzling spins and flips at campus events and even competes against other universities and jump rope clubs from around the country. 3 "The End of Absence" Michael Harris. But Baddour explained to the chancellor that because of Williams respect for Guthridge, hed never have taken the job over his friend. He was extremely special, important to every player, every coach who ever worked here. He was 77 years old. In our prayers. Ill really miss this next years team and what those guys have done for me, said Guthridge, whose team last season reached the Final Four before being eliminated in the semifinals. 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. Were the best North Carolina team that never won a championship. And everything that happened, for better or worse, led the program to where it is today. When Smith was needlessly ejected from the 1991 Final Four, it was Guthridge who was furious in the tunnel after the game. Now Guthridge, 77, is enduring a similarly cruel fate . My guess is he would not have been, and then the first call, yes, wouldve been Roy, Baddour says. Guthridge was the consensus National Coach of the Year in 1998. 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Guthridge took over when Smith retired after 36 seasons in October 1997. 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. Copyright 2013 by Capitol Broadcasting Company. MIAMI: Tulane athletic director Rick Dickson acknowledged he has given the school permission to talk to Green Wave coach Perry Clark about replacing Leonard Hamilton. Change), You are commenting using your Twitter account. As early as April and May, Bill Guthridge Smiths primary assistant for some 30 years reached out to Hanners about doing extra study of the teams offensive and defensive sets. Guthridge also took a less talented team to the Final Four in 2000. He was instrumental in helping lure Williams back to North Carolina. I dont think I have ever heard of anyone that didnt like and respect Bill Guthridge. After that loss, Carter and Jamison turned pro. We certainly had no idea; he was still the smartest guy, could recall everything he was seeing.. Coach Smith began showing signs of cognitive impairment before Coach Guthridge did. (LogOut/ Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. But more than just that team, Smith left behind a mound of questions. When his Tar Heels defeated Tulsa to earn a Final Four berth, the postgame locker room was one of the most emotional in the modern era, due at least partially to the devotion his players had for Guthridge and their joy in relievingat least for a momentthe criticism hed taken during the season. So why leave?, His dry sense of humor was legendary among his players. I talk to Coach Williams all the time, and I asked him, Whats the best advice Coach Smith ever gave you? And he said, Antawn, Coach Smith told me just coach til you cant coach anymore. The only thing he regretted was he felt like he stopped coaching too early.. I will miss his kindness and wisdom. Really, a championship or not is the only major differentiator between Smith and Guthridge. He came up with the idea that Dean Smith, having . Thank you Coach Gut for the many lessons you taught us at UNC. The Tar Heels lost to Florida in last seasons Final Four. when UNC named longtime assistant Bill Guthridge as his successor. That group, fresh off a Final Four appearance, was tabbed as the preseason No. "You get old." Bill and Dean, friends for life Smith. He was a part of 867 wins in 33 seasons at Carolina and 960 college coaching victories overall, including 93 wins on the staff at Kansas State. Some fans criticized Guthridge last season when the Tar Heels went through a four-game losing streak in January and entered the post-season with 13 losses. Guthridge was the head coach of the Tar Heels for three seasons following Dean Smith's retirement in 1997. No, I couldnt even consider that, Smith said. I want to spend the weekend thinking about it. 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. Born in Parsons, Kansas,[2] Guthridge attended Kansas State University in Manhattan, and graduated with a B.S. I remember telling the chancellor that, Baddour says. 2 "The End of Absence" Michael Harris, Pt. In 1998, the Bill Guthridge Distinguished Professorship in mathematics was established. Ndiaye remembers taking his son for a campus tour years later, and Guthridge coming out of the Smith Center to greet him. And come Monday, he got the fateful notice. The people who knew him best werent surprised he went to two Final Fours in three seasons.. After Coach Guthridges retirement in 2003, he and Coach Smith stayed in close contact, visiting each other frequently. Coach Guthridge is the best I have ever seen in selecting potential in high school players, Smith once said, according to the teams website. But if Smith was selfless in his handling of McAdoo, it was nothing compared to Smiths shocking retirement on Oct. 9, 1997. 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. Guthridge, his wife said, suffers from vascular dementia - a condition that's a result of reduced blood supply to the brain. I wouldve never thought of that in a million years.. If Bill Guthridge doesnt look familiar to you as a UNC-Chapel Hill head basketball coach, theres a very good reason for that. Brendan Marks covers Duke and North Carolina basketball for The Athletic. We easily could have won the championship, man, Ndiaye says. Hed have been two years into a rebuild at Notre Dame, and perhaps less reluctant to leave. Neither Davis nor athletic director Ron Wellman would comment on his departure. He was 77. Its funny that were doing this story, Jamison says. Frederick said he wanted to emphasize to Williams how strongly the university, the community, the people in the state of Kansas and all of our alumni and fans feel about him continuing as the Jayhawk coach forever.. When Smith retired as Division I's winningest men's coach shortly before the 1997-98 season, Guthridge was promoted to replace him, and he guided the Tar Heels to two Final Fours in three seasons. Born William Wallace Guthridge, he attended Kansas State University where he played guard on the basketball team and helped the Wildcats. What you saw was the quiet assistant sitting on the bench. At the time, their run of 172 consecutive weeks in the AP Poll was the second-longest in college basketball history. Guthridge could deal with Dean's irritability, his need to control the smallest things. What about Ford? You will be missed. After waiting an uncharacteristically long time to respond, he smiled and thanked me. Guthridge also handled many day-to-day responsibilities in the program and oversaw UNC's summer basketball camps. "Coach Guthridge was instrumental in recruiting me to UNC and I have so many great memories of him and the lessons he taught me. All the things he couldnt do during the daunting in-season months. The closest he came to leaving Chapel Hill was 1978, when he verbally accepted the head coaching job at Penn State. Williams famously turned him down, opting to remain at Kansas, where hed built a Carolina-esque family dynamic (at Smiths alma mater, to boot). He handed out handwritten notes instead. Guthridge was the longtime assistant to UNC coach Dean Smith, who died earlier this year. It was an admirable, honorable action for Smith to take and Guthridge went on to win 80 games in three seasons. (Jed Jacobsohn / ALLSPORT via Getty), Theres a world where Ford got his chance to be UNCs head coach, and maybe still would be in that position. And I think he probably had second thoughts, because at what point was it really a danger? I really liked the attitude of the team, the way they worked hard and how they were rewarded finally. Carolina Basketball confirmed the news on Twitter: Sad news. Division regular season champion 1 ranking in the Associated Press Top 25, earned the ACC Coach of the Year award and guided North Carolina to the Final Four before losing to Utah. 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. [5], He died at his home on May 12, 2015, after an extended illness, alongside his family. "My sympathies go out to his wife, Leesie, and their kids and family.". Its another tremendous loss for our University, our basketball program and our entire community. That aspect of his character first surfaced in 1972, when the University of North Carolina basketball coach left Tar Heel fans bewildered by announcing that he wanted junior star forward Robert McAdoo to turn pro rather than return for the 1972-73 season. Other opportunities had arisen over time, and yet Guthridge always remained as Smiths assistant. Guthridge spent 31 seasons as an assistant to Smith, the winningest coach in college basketball history. Former UNC Director of Athletics Dick Baddour: Bill was one of the most respected and admired people I have known. I was just happy that the team had success. Dick, lets talk on Monday, but Im pretty sure Im gonna tell you Monday its time to transition, Baddour remembers. Doherty was criticized from the moment he was hired, for breaking somewhat from Smith and Guthridges family dynamic; that scrutiny only intensified in his second season, when UNC bottomed out to a program-worst record of 8-20. He played or coached in 14 Final Fours, more than any person in NCAA history. The Kansas native took over the role of head coach following Smith's departure. Looking around at his devastated players in the locker room, Guthridge realized he simply couldnt leave. He led his first team to the 1998 Final Four and had two players, Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison, selected in the top five . 33 yrs on UNC bench. "He was an unbelievable assistant to Coach Smith. CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Former University of North Carolina head coach Bill Guthridge, who also served 30 years as an assistant to Dean Smith, died Tuesday night at age 77, university officials confirmed on Wednesday. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Coach Smith died in January 2015 of complications from dementia, Profiles in Dementia: Zelda Fitzgerald(1900-1948), Facebook Group for Caregivers of Loved Ones with Alzheimer's Disease, Dementia, and Other Age-Related Illnesses, R. E. M. 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