http://cjonline.com/stories/040108/haw_263818139.shtml
It begins: Kansas vs. Roy, finally
By Tully Corcoran
The Capital-Journal
Published Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Saturday in San Antonio, everybody is going to be wearing crimson and blue or baby blue and white.
It's going to look an awful lot like one of Roy Williams' basketball camps.
GERRY BROOME / The Associated Press
Roy Williams is still 'a huge Kansas fan.' For many Jayhawk fans, the feelings aren't reciprocal after Williams left KU for North Carolina five years ago.
"In my summer camp, we have a lot of little kids running around, and they're instructed the first day, they can wear North Carolina stuff or they can wear Kansas stuff, but they can't wear anybody else's stuff," Williams said Monday. "That's the way I'm always going to be. I'm always going to be a huge Kansas fan."
So stretch out your little pinky fingers and sharpen up on your dadgummits, for with that, Roy vs. Kansas week begins.
Saturday will be a day Williams has dreaded. Five years after he left Kansas, five years after the "Benedict Williams" T-shirt hit the streets of Lawrence, and five years after Kansas' last Final Four appearance, Williams finally faces the girl whose heart he broke, and he's hoping she's forgiven him but isn't sure.
"There were some things said or done at first, but time has a way of healing things, and I'm hopeful it heals with some people who still may have some bad feelings," he said. "The good news is it's a wonderful Kansas team playing a wonderful North Carolina team on college basketball's biggest stage."
That it is. And it is remarkable, said Kansas coach Bill Self, that it took so long, not only for North Carolina and Kansas to meet, but the Self still hasn't met his old flame, Illinois. After all, Self is the one with the true perspective in all this. He not only left a school where he was beloved, he took over for a legend at his next stop.
"Although Roy leaving here certainly has garnered more national attention, me leaving Illinois was a big, big deal there," Self said. "It's an emotional time. You want the timing to be right on those sorts of things, but the timing's never right. It was tough."
So tough that Self's replacement, Bruce Weber, held a bizarre mock funeral for Self in an attempt to make fans forget, which, of course, they haven't. Illinois and Kansas fans still engage in Internet flame wars, the same way Kansas and North Carolina fans do. They are perhaps the only rivalries in the country in which the teams never play each other.
That's how intense this all is.
Williams will never schedule Kansas, because that would mean either UNC or KU would have to lose.
"The reason I say I wouldn't schedule them, it's very easy for me because they're my second-favorite college team," Williams said. "Those people gave me a chance. It's a place that I loved for 15 years. I never scheduled North Carolina when I was at Kansas because, for those 15 years, North Carolina was my second-favorite team. I have too many great memories to consider somebody a foe on the other end of the court."
They are now foes, and it's tempting to say that this will be Self's chance to finally escape from Williams' cloud, to end the comparisons once and for all. Essentially, to get this all over with.
Self doesn't see it that way.
"We knew following a guy that had as much success as Roy, we knew the first couple years were going to be years that there'd be comparisons," he said. "It's tough to live up to a guy that went to back-to-back Final Fours and wins 80 percent of his games. But certainly I think we've gotten past that and enjoyed our time here."
Finally, Kansas has gotten past that. But it didn't happen overnight. Self said he felt like it was his team from day one. But his system, his motivational tactics, his personality are all so different from those of Williams, combined with the fact that the roster
Self inherited had just finished four points shy of the national title, made it a hard sell.
"The players wonder, 'Why do we want to play that way? We know this other way works,'" Self said. "That right there to me was the challenge, getting everyone to buy into what was best for us. The kids, they did a good job with it and everything, but still they've heard two voices. And one voice was very, very, very successful. Subconsciously, they could still hear those two voices."
Meanwhile, Williams was a hero in Chapel Hill, N.C. He saved a desperate program. He won the national championship, something he never could quite do at Kansas.
As the game approaches, Williams and Self are both hoping all of this talk will die down. They want people to talk about the players.
Williams wants people to move on.
"There's no question that I hope so, because it is something that's bothered me," Williams said. "I gave my heart and soul for 15 years. I loved that place. I always will love that place.
"People pass me in the airport and say, 'Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk,' and I say, 'Go, KU.'"
Tully Corcoran can be reached at (785) 295-5652 or tully.corcoran@cjonline.com.