By R.L. Bynum
As North Carolina patiently plays the waiting game in its search for a men’s basketball coach, the Tar Heels are hoping to pull off a rare feat of luring a coach coming off a Final Four run.
UNC’s firing of Hubert Davis has created major buzz in the college basketball world because the program does not often have to wait long for its next coach. The search has taken more than a week and could very well take two weeks.
There are four notable examples of coaches taking their teams to the Final Four, then departing for another job.
Roy Williams, who retired as UNC’s coach five Aprils ago, made that rare move 13 years ago. He left Kansas for North Carolina, officially taking the job six days after his Jayhawks lost 81–78 to Syracuse in the 2003 national championship game.
Williams, who famously told CBS’ Bonnie Bernstein on a live national TV postgame interview that he “could give a s**t about North Carolina right now,” later acknowledged how difficult it was to walk into a meeting and tell players he was leaving after a run like that.
It’s why that resonates now with UNC’s search colliding with the Final Four.
Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd is thought to be Carolina’s top candidate, which has turned some questions he’s fielded about basketball into a gauge of his intentions.
Given a couple of chances to knock down rumors that he’ll be UNC’s next coach, Lloyd instead emphasized his focus on his No. 2 Wildcats team (36–2), which faces No. 3 Michigan (35–3) in Saturday’s second national semifinal in Indianapolis (8:49 p.m., TBS, TNT).
Would it be harder or easier for him to leave if Arizona won the title? That debate is raging, but nobody can say what Lloyd’s mindset is, and he isn’t saying.
Lloyd did not create the noise, but he hasn’t quelled speculation with his comments.
Last week, he talked about protecting the program and building it for whoever comes next, then added, “Arizona is going to have another good coach after me, I promise you,” a line that landed differently with the national focus on the UNC search.
By Tuesday, with Arizona preparing to head to the Final Four, Lloyd tried to steer the conversation back to its intended meaning. It did not stop the speculation.
Lloyd can credibly say that he is focused on the Final Four and that the comment everyone latched onto was not about Chapel Hill. Both statements can be true, and it doesn’t mean that leaving for UNC isn’t possible.
Michigan’s Dusty May sits in a different part of this same storm.
May has been mentioned as a possible UNC target. But the prevailing framing has been that his candidacy is less inevitable than Lloyd’s, particularly considering he turned down his alma mater, Indiana, one year ago. He’s also only in his second season at Michigan, while this is Lloyd’s fifth season at Arizona.
May has said he is “incredibly happy at Michigan,” describing Ann Arbor, Mich., as home. Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel has backed that up publicly, stating that he wants May to coach the Wolverines for a long time and will work to make that happen.
Go back further than Williams’ decision to “come home,” and you find other versions of coaches making Final Four runs and leaving. In the other three cases, the coaches left for the NBA.
— Rick Pitino took Providence to the Final Four in 1987, then left to coach the New York Knicks that summer.
— Larry Brown, who played for Dean Smith at UNC, led Kansas to the 1988 national championship, then took the San Antonio Spurs job that June with NCAA sanctions imminent. Williams replaced him as head coach.
— John Calipari led UMass to the 1996 Final Four and left to coach the New Jersey Nets.
It is not hard to see why Lloyd is treated as the most desirable college coach in the mix. He is already steering a program with national expectations, coaching on the sport’s biggest stage, and has had to answer questions about a comment that sounded, to some ears, like a preface to departure.
It is also not hard to see why May’s name keeps resurfacing, even with the public pushback. Michigan is a premier job, May has said he is happy, and his athletic director has signaled institutional intent. Still, the UNC job has a way of pulling on the edges of any narrative until the seams show.
UNC can only wait for the Final Four to play out and go from there.
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Photo via arizonawildcats.com
