Roy Williams and more: Connections enrich hoops histories of Kansas, North Carolina
.jpg "Blueblood basketball brethren KU and North Carolina share so many legendary connections in men’s hoops, including, clockwise starting at the top left, Dean Smith, Roy Williams, Dick Harp and Larry Brown.")
North Carolina defeated a sworn enemy in Saturday’s national semifinals, but its historical relationship with the opponent awaiting in Monday night’s championship game is something quite different.
The Tar Heels, who ousted Duke to advance, and Kansas Jayhawks, who eliminated Villanova, are college basketball cousins, having contributed to one another’s success for decades with some major overlap in the primary figures who helped build both programs.
That doesn’t mean the feelings will be anything less than fierce on Monday when the title game tips off at 8:20 p.m. Central time at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
For instance, don’t expect newly retired Roy Williams to wear a Jayhawks sticker (more on that later) or some combination of the colors representing the two powerhouses he coached for a total of 33 seasons.
But the 83rd NCAA Division I men’s championship game will add another layer to the heap of connections that have bound Kansas and North Carolina for decades — connections so deep that they neither can discuss its rich history without crediting the other’s.
“It’s really amazing, isn’t it?” former Kansas coach Larry Brown said in 2008, before KU and North Carolina met at that season’s Final Four. “These are special programs.”
Brown is just one of many men with feet firmly planted in both programs. Another: Tar Heels assistant coach Brad Frederick. He the son of the late KU athletic director Bob Frederick.
In 1988, after KU won the NCAA championship, Bob Frederick sought a replacement for Brown, the former North Carolina guard who resigned to return to the NBA. Legendary Tar Heels coach Dean Smith, a reserve guard on the Jayhawks’ 1952 NCAA championship team, called Frederick to recommend assistant coach Roy Williams. Five years earlier, Smith had recommended Brown to KU.
After 15 seasons in Lawrence and four Final Four appearances, Williams returned to Chapel Hill and won three NCAA titles. Brad Frederick, a Lawrence High graduate, played for the legendary Smith, an Emporia, Kansas, native, in his final season on the bench. He served on Williams’ staff for eight years.
Another relationship surrounds the late Dick Harp, a former KU guard, assistant and head coach who died in 2000. Harp took over the Kansas program in 1956 after Phog Allen’s retirement. That season was the first for Wilt Chamberlain, who led KU to the NCAA title game against ... North Carolina.
The Tar Heels created a low-possession game to limit Chamberlain’s influence. In a triple-overtime thriller at Kansas City’s Municipal Auditorium, UNC won its first — and the ACC’s first — NCAA title. Four years later, Smith, rooting for Kansas in that 1957 game, became North Carolina’s head coach and in 1986 hired Harp to his Tar Heels staff.
Until this year, Harp, a guard on KU’s 1940 national runner-up team, was the only person to play and serve as a head coach in a Final Four for his alma mater. Current North Carolina coach Hubert Davis has now joined that list.
In Davis’ lone Final Four appearance, he scored a game-high 25 points in the 1991 national semifinals. But North Carolina’s Final Four run that year ended with a loss ... to Kansas.
In 1992, Kansas and North Carolina were in the Rainbow Classic field together in Honolulu. So was Michigan, with its baggy shorts-wearing Fab Five team that included Chris Webber, Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard.
When the Tar Heels played the Wolverines in a semifinal game, Kansas fans who had just watched their team win stuck around and openly rooted for UNC — as a tribute to Williams. North Carolina lost, and when KU met Michigan in the title game, Tar Heels fans cheered for Kansas.
There will be none of that on Monday as the teams meet for the fifth time in the Final Four. No other teams have matched up more than three.
Besides 1957, North Carolina beat the Jayhawks in the 1993 semifinals. Kansas won in 1991 and again in the 2008 semifinals, when Bill Self topped Williams. The former Kansas coach watched the KU-Memphis title game wearing a Jayhawks sticker.
It’s been that kind of relationship between these two programs.
This story was originally published April 3, 2022 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Roy Williams and more: Connections enrich hoops histories of Kansas, North Carolina."