American collegiate basketball legend Roy Williams retired with a net worth of $12 million. Both the Kansas Jayhawks and the North Carolina Tar Heels men’s basketball teams had Roy Williams as their head coach. To highlight just a few of his many achievements, he led the former team to the NCAA tournament for a record-setting 14 straight years and led the later squad to three NCAA national titles. He was also crucial in convincing Michael Jordan, then a high school player, to go up with the Tar Heels. Williams retired after 48 years as a coach, having led his teams to 903 victories and nine trips to the NCAA Championship game.
Early Life and Education
On August 1, 1950, in Marion, North Carolina, Roy Williams entered the world. While growing up in the area around Asheville, he attended T.C. Roberson High School. Williams earned two varsity letters in two different sports at that school. He was a standout in the former sport, earning all-county and all-conference honours in 1967 and 1968. Williams continued his collegiate basketball career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Career Beginnings
In 1973, Williams began his coaching career at Charles D. Owen High School in Black Mountain, where he worked with the football, golf, and basketball teams. His resume also includes two years leading the athletic department as its director. Williams came back to UNC in 1978 to aid Dean Smith in coaching the Tar Heels. Williams was the head coach at UNC for ten years, during which time the programme had a 275-61 record and won the 1982 NCAA championship.
Kansas Coaching
Williams coached the Kansas University Jayhawks men’s basketball team after leaving North Carolina in 1988. In 15 years as head coach at Kansas (ending in 2003), he went 418-101, good for second on the school’s all-time wins list behind only Phog Allen. Williams also guided the Jayhawks to 14 consecutive participation in the NCAA tournament, four Final Fours, two national championship games, and nine regular season conference titles.
Kansas was the first team in Big 12 history to go unbeaten in the 2001–02 season. During Williams’s presidency, the university achieved numerous more winning records. In 1997 and 2002, for example, Kansas had the highest winning percentage of any college football team in the country. The Jayhawks had a better winning percentage and more victories than any other team in the 1990s
North Carolina Coaching, Part 1
Williams became the head coach of his alma mater’s basketball team, the Tar Heels, in 2003. With the struggling squad, he led them to a 19-11 record to the NCAA tournament in his first season. However, the Tar Heels’ return to greatness occurred during his second year as coach. The squad won the 2005 NCAA national championship with the help of freshman Marvin Williams.
After the Tar Heels won the national championship, their top seven scorers all left for college or the NBA draught. The squad nonetheless enjoyed a winning season and Williams was voted coach of the year despite the exodus. Williams signed a slew of A-list players for the 2006–07 season. Among them were Ty Lawson, Deon Thompson, and Brandan Wright.
The outcome was a number one seed for the Tar Heels, and they went on to win the ACC tournament and advance to the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament. The Tar Heels repeated their success from the previous year by reaching the championship game. After winning the ACC regular season title for the third year in a row in 2008–09, the team went on to win the NCAA title and Williams’ second national championship.
North Carolina Coaching, Part 2
UNC was embroiled in a fraud and plagiarism scandal in 2010. The Tar Heels were negatively impacted, as they went on to end the regular season 16-15 and were eliminated from the ACC tournament in the first round as a result. The following year, the team started slowly but eventually won the ACC regular-season championship again. The 2011-12 Tar Heels went even further than their 2010-11 ACC championship run by reaching the Final Four.
Unfortunately, the following three years were not as successful, with the Sweet 16 being the farthest the team got in 2014–15. The 2015–16 season was much more successful for Williams and the Tar Heels, as they won the regular season and ACC tournament crowns and advanced to the title game, where they were defeated by Villanova. Villanova eventually triumphed and became champion.
Williams coached the North Carolina Tar Heels to their third NCAA national championship in 2016–17. It made him one of a select group of coaches in Men’s Division I college basketball history to have ever won three or more NCAA titles. In early 2021, Williams achieved another career high point by becoming the fastest male coach in history to win 900 games. Several weeks later, he declared his retirement from coaching.
🔥🔥🔥 @Dyme_Lyfe I hope you like it FamBam. #CaliSooners https://t.co/N0SNAmJHUy
— Roy Williams (@roywilliams31) September 24, 2022
Personal Life
Williams has a son named Scott and a daughter named Kimberly with his wife, also a UNC alumna Wanda. The kids went to school at UNC. Williams and his wife have a history of supporting scholarship programmes at their alma institution. Autobiography “Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court” was co-written by Williams and Tim Crothers. The book, which came out in 2009, details Williams’ upbringing, coaching career, and the agonising decision to leave Kansas for North Carolina.
