CHAPEL HILL, N.C. ? North Carolina coach Bill Guthridge retired Friday after three years as Dean Smith’s successor, a move that opens one of the most prestigious jobs in college sports.
Guthridge spent 31 seasons as an assistant to Smith, the winningest coach in college basketball history.
“I think it’s time to turn it over to somebody else,” he said at a campus news conference.
Kansas coach Roy Williams, a former North Carolina assistant under Smith, will succeed Guthridge, a source close to the university told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Guthridge said a few weeks ago he planned to stay another five or six years despite intense criticism from fans and alumni after the team’s worst regular-season record in decades.
He said Friday he now knows how Smith felt in 1997 when he stepped down.
“You’re just exhausted,” he said.
Guthridge said he took a vacation in Europe in May, hoping to recharge, but wasn’t able to.
“I’ll really miss this next year’s 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.
Smith, who attended Guthridge’s retirement announcement, called the day a “celebration of a fantastic career. … Certainly, what a marvelous run of three years.”
Guthridge coached North Carolina to the Final Four in his first season before losing to Utah. He set NCAA records for most wins by a first-year head coach with 34, and for wins in his first two years with 58. The Tar Heels lost to Florida in last season’s Final Four.
It was the 14th time Guthridge participated in the Final Four. He competed in one as a player at Kansas State in 1958, was an assistant coach at 11 before directing the Tar Heels at two as head coach.
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.
The death of Guthridge’s mother, Betty, 96, two days before the Tar Heels played Tennessee at Knoxville in the NCAA South Regional semifinals also contributed to a difficult season.
The complaints turned to praise after the team’s unlikely Final Four appearance.
“The guys worked hard and didn’t lose confidence,” Guthridge said after the season. “I really liked the attitude of the team, the way they worked hard and how they were rewarded finally. It didn’t bother me that I was a ‘lousy’ coach, and when we started winning I was a ‘better’ coach. I was just happy that the team had success. I enjoyed my 30 years as an assistant coach, and I’ve enjoyed my three years as a head coach.”
Heading into what would have been the fourth year of a five-year contract, Guthridge compiled an 80-28 record, but had not received an extension.
Smith wrote in his memoir, “A Coach’s Life,” that before he retired in 1997, he told recruits: “If I’m not coaching, I am confident that your coach will be either Bill Guthridge, Eddie Fogler, Roy Williams, Larry Brown, George Karl or Phil Ford, not necessarily in that order. It has to be one of those.”
Williams talked Thursday night with Kansas athletic director Bob Frederick. 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.”
Kansas chancellor Robert Hemenway said the school was privileged to have Williams.
“Our hope and fervent desire is that the best basketball coach in America will continue to practice his craft at KU,” he said Thursday night.
