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.
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.
Williams said in a statement Friday he has agreed to talk to North Carolina athletic director Dick Baddour, but it is “completely false” that he has accepted the job.
“It’s been a great run,” Guthridge said at a campus news conference. “It was a tough decision for me to make, but I just ran out of energy.”
The 62-year-old coach spent 30 seasons as an assistant to Smith, the winningest coach in college basketball history, and took the Tar Heels to the Final Four in two of his three seasons as head coach.
“I think it’s time to turn it over to somebody else,” he said.
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 (18-13) in decades. During the season, the Tar Heels fell from the Top 25 for the first time in a decade.
“I know now how Dean felt three years ago 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 lost to Florida in last season’s NCAA semifinals.
Smith attended Guthridge’s announcement, calling the day a “celebration of a fantastic career. … Certainly, what a marvelous run of three years.”
Tar Heels forward Jason Capel said he and his teammates learned of Guthridge’s decision at a team meeting Thursday.
“I was shocked,” he said Friday. “It was very tough hearing it, and now it’s finalized. It makes it harder.”
In another move, Phil Ford, a star on Smith’s 1974-78 teams, will move from his job as assistant coach to another position within the athletic department, the university source said.
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.
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Last season marked the 14th time Guthridge participated in the Final Four. He competed in one as a player at Kansas State in 1958 and was an assistant coach at 11.
Guthridge caught heat last year for losing five games at home the most since World War II. The Tar Heels also lost in the first round of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
The death of Guthridge’s mother, Betty, 96, two days before the Tar Heels played Tennessee in the NCAA South Regional semifinals further contributed to a difficult season.
But the complaints turned to high 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.”
Baddour said at the start of Friday’s news conference there would be no discussion of the next coach.
Williams said an announcement clarifying his situation will come “on or before July 7,” the day before he goes on the road recruiting.”
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.
