Roy Williams' Tar Heels Hurting After Losing to Coach's Previous Team
The North Carolina Tar Heels, a top-seeded team for the NCAA basketball championship, lost to Kansas Sunday, ending the season for the college team.
Roy Williams, the team's coach who had gone on to compete for the national championships seven years ago as the coach for Kansas, was left relatively speechless after the game. Many players however, commented about the painful loss.
"You look into the locker room, look at the faces and realize how much it means to every member of this team," injured point guard Kendall Marshall said. "We wanted to do it for each other this year. We felt like we had a golden opportunity pass by last year, and we didn't want to do it again."
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Stilman White, Carolina's freshman point guard who was forced to start back-to-back games because of a wrist injury to sophomore Kendall Marshall, accompanied the coach with matching despair.
"It hurts," White said. "This was a great team and we had great goals and it doesn't feel like we quite achieved them. But we played as hard as we could and just came up a little bit short."
The Fay Observer reported on the teams two-year consecutive loss: "UNC (32-6) began the season as the favorite to capture the title in New Orleans, but it fell one victory short of the Final Four for the second straight year, with a rash of injuries and the Jayhawks' suffocating defense proving to be the most imposing roadblocks on the way to the Big Easy."
The teams 80-67 loss to Kansas marks the end of the season for Williams. Some fans urged the coach to accept the loss as way to ease past tensions.
"I would love to see Roy in the stands again wearing KU colors! He previously said he loved two schools. That would show some real class, and would put an end to any remaining hard feelings," JayhawkFan1985 wrote on the Observer's blog.
