Kansas basketball coach Roy Williams has proven that the past several years after losses in the NCAA Tournament.

“I’ve heard people make fun of it or something. I’m from the mountains of North Carolina, and I’ve never heard one of those suckers say it to my face,” Williams said defiantly during a press conference Thursday at University of Dayton Arena, site of tonight’s KU-Cal State Northridge first-round Midwest Regional game.

“It doesn’t bother me at all. The day that I don’t cry when we lose the next couple of weeks after that I’ll quit, because I won’t be sitting up here crying putting on a show. If I don’t have those feelings any more, then I’ll know I’m not giving it my heart and soul and every ounce of my body.”

Williams says he sobs after tourney losses only after being asked a question that reminds him he won’t be coaching his team again until the following season.

“The finality, the suddenness in which your season is over. It’s boom!” Williams said.

He noted he also shed a tear in 1982 when he was an assistant on North Carolina’s national championship team.

“I am just emotional. I don’t mind saying it,” the coach said.

He’s also inspirational at times.

Williams put a graphic on the locker room chalkboard Wednesday at Allen Fieldhouse before the Jayhawks came to Dayton.

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“I wrote down that in 1991 we were 3-3 (down the stretch). In 1993 we were 4-3 before our runs to the Final Four,” Williams said. “I didn’t want them to overreact to the loss last Saturday (to Oklahoma).

“It (the loss) was blown out of proportion and we had two kids make one remark each toward each other on the court. That got blown out of proportion that there was dissent. There was not dissent and I don’t want them to overreact to one loss.”

It’s believed Drew Gooden and Eric Chenowith had words after a play in the second half of last Saturday’s loss to OU.

Gooden on Thursday didn’t say who was involved, but he did say overreaction to players having words was silly.

“It was an exchange of words between two players. Coach pointed it out and said, ‘You can’t have that,”’ Gooden said. “I wish the reporters that wrote about that could go back and erase it because it’s all blown out of proportion.

“There’s not one team that’s ever played that hasn’t had two players say something to each other. Know what I’m saying? This team is totally together. This team has never had any animosity.”

Dayton Arena

The Jayhawks worked out for an hour Thursday afternoon before a hundred or so fans at University of Dayton Arena, which seats 13,455. On Thursday morning, the team practiced for about two hours at a high school gym.

Nash attends

KU freshman forward Bryant Nash made the trip to Dayton despite the fact earlier this week he suffered a torn medial collateral ligament in his right knee.

He’s on braces and will have to stay off the knee “four to six weeks.”

“I just wanted to be here as part of my team,” said Nash, 6-6 from Carrollton, Texas. “It’s very disappointing. I hoped we would go to the top and I could get in a game or two. Now I’ll cheer.”

Nash said he was hurt trying to go for a putback layup at practice.

“I was going up for a layup and my knee got pushed in by one of our big guys,” Nash said of the incident Monday. “I knew it was hurt right away. I was so relieved it’s not the ACL. That’s the positive side of it. If it was the ACL I’m out six or seven months.”

Green’s here

Former KU assistant Jerry Green says it’s great to be at the same first-round site as his long-time pal and former boss Williams. Green’s Tennessee team will meet UNC Charlotte today.

“Of course LeRoy Williams and I go back about 30 years or more,” Green quipped. “He’s probably the brother I never had. We’ve been very, very close. We’ll retire somewhere close to each other sometime in the future.

“He’s been very, very special. We knew for many years we were going to work somewhere together. We call each other at least once every two weeks. We’ve already got two golf dates set for the summer.”

Green, who coached at Oregon five years before taking the Tennessee job in 1998, also is great friends with Cal State Northridge coach Bobby Braswell. Braswell assisted Green at Oregon.

Green was asked Thursday about talk of his job being in jeopardy at Tennessee. The Vols are 22-10 in this his fourth season. Overall, he is 89-35 in four years at UT.

“It goes with the business,” Green said. “We have worked hard to try to make Tennessee competitive. We’ve won 20 or more games all four years and made four NCAA Tournaments.

“We’ve still got work to do, to be very honest with you. They were 85-123 in seven years before we got there (at UT). You don’t take a program and turn it into an ideal program in three recruiting classes. I’m first to admit we’ve got a ways to go before we get it the way it should be.”

“Jerry Green,” Williams said, “can flat-out coach the game of basketball. I’d like the Tennessee people to sit and think that program is in a heck of a lot better shape now than four years ago. I sort of wish people would understand that a little bit. It’s a tough business, too. Coaches have big houses because they are able to take that criticism.”