Coach learned lessons early

UNC's Roy Williams is joining the Basketball Hall of Fame. But before coaching superstardom, he polished his craft with high schoolers who recall him vividly

SWANNANOA -- Porky Spencer was sitting behind North Carolina's bench when he glanced at Roy Williams, spied the bulging vein in his forehead and yelled "duck!" -- just before the coach's blazer flew into the stands.

"I played for him in high school,'' he remembers explaining to the astonished strangers sitting around him. "And leopards don't change their spots."

Before Williams won 524 college basketball games at Kansas and North Carolina, coached the Tar Heels to the 2005 national title and was voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame -- where this weekend he will become the eighth Tar Heel coach or player enshrined -- he was throwing menswear, preaching defense and building the beginnings of his basketball family at Swannanoa's Charles D. Owen High School.

UNC, where he began his college career as an assistant coach under fellow Hall of Famer Dean Smith, has long been considered the place where the 57-year-old developed his coaching mind. But it was at Owen, where he logged a 45-64 record, perfected his sideline foot-stomp routine and groomed a group of mountain kids into winners, that he developed his coaching personality.

"We were Roy's boys, the first generation,'' said Bobby Stafford, who played center for Williams for three seasons at Owen. "We went through all the running drills, saw him cry after tough losses, saw how passionate he was about his team, and about winning. His players today don't get anything we haven't already tasted.

"He was our Hall of Famer, even back then."

The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., honors all-time great players, coaches, referees and contributors to the game. As one of seven new members, he will join the likes of Smith (who will introduce him), former UNC coach Frank McGuire and star forward James Worthy in the hallowed hall.

Williams, however, said he didn't even know there was a hoops shrine when he was hired in the spring of 1973 at Owen, now a 700-student middle school.

Fresh off his master's degree at UNC, where he played on the freshman team and fanatically studied Smith's tactics, Williams turned down a Ph.D. spot in Carolina's physical education department because he wanted to coach. Back then, a position on a college bench never entered his mind. He just wanted to emulate Buddy Baldwin, his own coach at T.C. Roberson High School in Asheville.

"I didn't know anything about shoe contracts, TV shows,'' said Williams, who also served as a football coach, golf coach, athletics director and physical education and health teacher during his five years at Owen. "I just really wanted to be like Buddy Baldwin, and that's all it was."

In shades of what would happen when Kansas hired Williams 15 years later, teachers and coaches thought Principal Charles Lytle was crazy when he chose the 24-year-old, who grew up 10 miles down U.S. 70 in Biltmore. The Warhorses hadn't posted a winning boys basketball record in at least a decade, "and we thought this time the administration would go for a big name,'' said Bill Mott, who coached with Williams on the football team. "And basically, they hired Carolina's statistician."

Williams, newly married and barely older than his new players, said his early strategy was simple: "Work really hard ... try to be really unselfish, and take good shots."

He arrived at his first workout holding a minute-by-minute practice schedule, a la Carolina and Smith, and set about teaching UNC's offense and defense.

"I can still watch his teams on TV and know exactly where each pass is going,'' said Byron Bailey, a sophomore on Williams' first team who works as a real estate agent in Black Mountain. "We did everything the Tar Heels did. They just did it a whole lot better."