For every action…blah, blah, blah.
You knew this shoe had to drop as soon as someone over at the N&O decided to call up Bill Guthridge and ask him if he did indeed shun Roy Williams after the latter opted to not follow the former as head coach in Chapel Hill.
“When I retired, I had hoped that he would come back to coach, and when he didn’t, I should have handled it better,’’ Guthridge said Monday in a phone interview. “I should have communicated with him. I’m glad he took the job the second time around [in 2003] … but if I had it to do all over again, I’d do it differently.”
Apparently Eddie Fogler treated Roy much the same way. It is one thing for the fans to act like this but who knew the elders in the UNC family would be worse? Guthridge indicated that Roy “has been really nice to me” which I take to mean “Roy gave me a real office instead of the broom closet Matt Doherty stuck me in.”
Side question: What was Guthridge’s real beef with Roy? Was it simply a matter of Roy not doing what Guthridge(and apparently others) thought family loyalty demanded by returning in 2000? Or did Guthridge see the handwriting on the wall concerning his own failure to recruit quality players and knew that Roy was the best bet to fix it thus minimizing the blame that would assigned to him personally when the crap hit the fan? I will go with the loyalty option though had Roy come in 2000, I think Guthridge’s reputation would have taken less of a beating than it eventually did.
