Kansas fans worried about Roy Williams losing his zest for coaching can relax.
Despite landing, then losing, then landing again but finally and irrevocably losing the most talented player he ever signed, Williams left Thursday for a golfing vacation in Scotland a happy man.
Unlike two years ago when the slimy underside of the college recruiting process made Williams question his desire even to stay in coaching, the architect of college basketball’s winningest program of the ’90s can hardly wait to get back.
“I’m feeling very good,” he said. “I’m looking forward to 10 days of golf in Scotland, then two great weeks of basketball camp, catching my breath for a week and then plunging into summer recruiting.”
One might expect him to be feeling very bad. For two years, Williams invested an enormous amount of time and effort into recruiting DeShawn Stevenson, a brilliant high school swingman from California.
Stevenson signed an early letter of intent with Kansas before his senior season, but then failed to make a passing grade on the SAT test.
Urged by his family to go to college and by others to go directly into the NBA draft, Stevenson changed his mind about Kansas, then re-took the test and announced he’d changed his mind again and would indeed play for the Jayhawks.
But then the testing service invalidated his score. And at the end of a confusing series of events, he opted for the NBA. And that was that. College underclassmen can declare for the draft and change their minds, but the NCAA makes no such allowances for high schoolers.
So all that time and all that work went for naught.
“It was discouraging. But it wasn’t distasteful,” Williams said. “Discouraging but not unethical. It was discouraging but it wasn’t frustrating with my profession. Those recruiting scenarios a few years back, you could put them in any of those categories. The best thing was dealing with DeShawn and his family and mom.
“I honestly believe the rules almost made it necessary for DeShawn to go to the NBA.”
If Stevenson had the right test score, “then there’s no doubt, no doubt, that he would have come to KU,” Williams said. “There would not have been an NBA option. But the fact he did not qualify kept people trying to remind him the NBA could be an option. He had to make a decision by May 14, even though he had three opportunities to re-take the test after that.”
And so another raw high school kid is about to mix it up with the great, grown-up athletes of the NBA.
“He has tremendous gifts,” Williams said. “Do I think he’s ready for the NBA? No, I don’t.”
Without a doubt, coming up empty on the Stevenson sweepstakes meant a lot of wasted time.
“We recruited a second player early then stopped recruiting him,” Williams said. “But we got DeShawn to sign with us. He was the one player we identified we wanted. We felt great about it.”
Nevertheless, Williams headed for Scotland feeling positive about the entire experience.
“I haven’t felt bad about it at all,” he said. “The young man had a dream. It was to play college basketball and to be an NBA player. I want all my players to have that dream because that means they’re probably good. He just gave up the intermediate dream.”
Williams’ group of eight men going to Scotland included Kansas football coach Terry Allen and Randy Towner, the golf pro at Alvamar Golf Course in Lawrence, Kan. Also along, as a gift from Williams, was Buddy Baldwin, his high school coach in North Carolina.
“Six of us are taking our wives,” Williams said. “Everything has worked out great.”
