With those two words “I’m staying” spoken before a throng of media shoehorned into the KU football locker room, shown live on the Memorial Stadium video board to an assembled crowd symbolically estimated at 16,300 and aired live across the nation Williams elicited a mighty cheer that reverberated through the stadium’s concrete and iron. Metaphorically, at least, it also echoed across the college basketball landscape.

Thus ended a seven-day span of speculation and conjecture as Williams, who in 12 seasons coached the Jayhawks to 329 victories and 82 losses, wrestled with a decision that pitted his past against his present.

Curiously, Williams credited the men who planted the seeds for his North Carolina lineage, and who seemed so certain to take Williams home again, for the foundation of the decision that kept him at Kansas.

“My mentors taught me that loyalty is the most important thing,” Williams said. “I couldn’t leave my players. I couldn’t trade my players. That became more important than my dream of being at North Carolina.”

Melissa Lacey/Journal-World Photo

So, in the end, Williams found it more difficult to deny his players than his teachers. He said he finally decided to stay at Kansas during a Thursday afternoon walk on campus a campus festooned with signs and banners begging him to stay.

His turmoil began June 29 when word spread that one of Williams’ mentors, Bill Guthridge, was stepping down as Carolina’s coach. By Friday, several media sources began to report that Williams a Carolina native and UNC grad already had been named successor, handpicked by legendary UNC coach Dean Smith. Smith, a member of the 1952 national championship team at Kansas, was Williams’ first college coaching boss.

On Friday night, Williams held a news conference denouncing the report and begging for patience from Kansas fans as he made his decision. The next day, he headed off for a Charleston, S.C., vacation.

In the intervening days, reports surfaced again and again that Williams was a goner. Cards and letters accumulated around Allen Fieldhouse and Williams’ e-mail count climbed near 2,000 as Kansas fans tried to overturn a decision they feared already had been made.

But Williams stressed Thursday night that his decision wasn’t made until just hours before the Memorial Stadium announcement.

He met Thursday morning with KU athletics director Bob Frederick, the man who, 12 years ago, took a chance by naming an unknown Williams as keeper of the KU basketball tradition and Kansas Chancellor Robert Hemenway.

Then Williams went for a walk on the KU campus.

“Last Thursday, if someone had put a gun to my head, I would have said it (was) probably North Carolina,” Williams said. “But as it went along, as I started thinking about the great young men I was able to coach, I would have felt if I left them, I wasn’t truthful to them when I recruited them. I would have been disloyal to them, and that was what I couldn’t handle.”

‘Lifetime’ contract

By spurning the Tar Heels, Williams effectively ended any chance he’ll leave KU short of being terminated before retirement.

“I do have a five-year rollover (contract),” Williams said. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s lifetime. If they chose not to roll it over one year, I’m heading to the first tee.”

Williams said he hoped he hadn’t severed ties to his beloved old Carolina home.

“The North Carolina people have been fantastic with me,” he said. “It’s hard to have the same feeling for someone if there’s been some type of rejection. I’m hoping this is not a divorce. I hope they understand I’m doing something I was taught to do, putting my players before my dream.”

In the wake of Williams’ announcement, UNC had its own news conference. Officials there expressed disappointment at being unable to bring Williams back. They promptly named Guthridge interim coach and vowed to move quickly to bring in a full-time replacement.

Telling Smith of his decision proved to be the most difficult for Williams.

“He was disappointed, and a little surprised at the same time,” Williams said of his talk with his old mentor, a KU grad. “He said, ‘I want what’s best for you. I want what you want.’ But it’s hard to tell the man who’s meant every success I’ve ever had it’s hard to tell the man no.”

‘This is the place’

A Memorial Stadium crowd estimated at 16,300 the capacity of Allen Fieldhouse, the Jayhawks’ venerable basketball barn watched the news conference on the video board, heard Williams address them personally, then stuck around long afterward, drinking free sodas and watching Kansas basketball videos on the video board.

Also on hand were more than a few former Jayhawks, including Mike Maddox, Jacque Vaughn, Ryan Robertson, Jerod Haase, C.B. McGrath, Kevin Pritchard and Alonzo Jamison.

“This is truly a fantastic place,” said Williams, who more than once appeared to choke back tears. “With the players we have now, the players we’ve had in the past the University of Kansas is the place I’m supposed to be. I had a dream of North Carolina being my dream place. But my players, the fans showed me this is the place.”

Robertson was giddy. He was driving to Hutchinson to work a basketball camp when he got word of Williams’ news conference and decided to drop in for the announcement.

“Now he’s the Dean Smith of Kansas,” Robertson said. “You can’t predict what he can accomplish over the next 10, 15 years with the recruits he’s going to get now.”

Frederick, who gave Williams space to make the decision on his own, on Thursday teamed with Hemenway to remind Williams of the Jayhawks’ own storied basketball tradition.

Frederick said Williams needed no added incentive, monetary or otherwise, to return for his 13th season.

“Nothing,” Frederick said. “There’s no change in the contract. We didn’t even talk about it.”

Decision came Thursday

Frederick left Williams alone most of the past seven days. They talked briefly on Sunday, but Frederick followed Williams’ exploits like his golf excursion with Smith and UNC athletics director Dick Baddour in the media.

“This is a huge moment,” Frederick said. “I’m really excited for the university. Chancellor Hemenway and I made the decision at the beginning that we were going to give Roy space and time, and we did that. Saturday I was a little worried when I heard reports about where coach Williams was. I talked to him and said, ‘Do I need to recruit you again?’ He said no.”

Williams said, contrary to reports, he never orally agreed to a deal with UNC, and he was undecided Wednesday when he left the Carolinas and Wednesday night when he returned to Lawrence.

He was still torn Thursday, but by noon, he was all but settled.

“There are people saying it was all choreographed, that I was just doing this to make the Kansas people feel good,” Williams said. “You guys can accuse me of a lot of things, but you can’t accuse me of being a phony.”

Frederick didn’t know Williams’ leaning until just before the end of the Thursday morning meeting, when Williams asked, should he decide to stay, if KU could send the university jet to South Carolina to pick up his wife, Wanda, and daughter, Kim, to be on hand for the announcement.

“We said, ‘We can get the plane there pretty fast,'” Frederick said with a laugh.

Williams made his announcement at night to give Wanda and Kim time to return and for fans to be a part of the night.

“I hope the Kansas fans are pleased,” he said. “And I hope they continue to make Allen Fieldhouse the best place there is to play college basketball. Incoming (UNC) Chancellor (Jim) Moeser made a statement that it’s not immoral to love two institutions, and I do, but I made the best decision for me.

“I am here and I am ecstatic to be here. It’s been an excruciating seven days, and again that shows what a lucky person I’ve been. If this is a good moment for Kansas basketball, I wanted the fans and everybody to be able to enjoy it.”