OPINION

By Mike DeCourcy

updated 7:00 p.m. ET Sept. 7, 2007

Mike DeCourcy

Had Roy Williams chosen to remain at Kansas forever, at some point during forever the university would have changed the name of America's most esteemed gymnasium.

Would it have been Allen-Williams Fieldhouse?

Or Williams-Allen Fieldhouse?

One of those. No one at KU is likely to admit to this now, because Williams does not belong to Kansas in the way he did from 1988 to 2003. But the legacy he was building there before making the move back home to North Carolina, where his children had decided to make their adult lives, demanded this level of recognition.

What's interesting about that today is he might not be entering the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as part of the 2007 class if he'd chosen to stay at KU. He'd been at Kansas for 15 seasons and only came truly close to winning the NCAA championship in his final game with the Jayhawks, an 81-78 loss to Syracuse in the 2003 national championship game at the New Orleans Superdome. He kept the program in the neighborhood all the time, with two trips to the NCAA title game, four Final Fours and five No. 1 seeds. But he never got through the door.

So where would he be now if he still were in Kansas?

Every one of the men's college basketball coaches inducted to the Hall this decade owned an NCAA championship: Jim Boeheim, Larry Brown, Jim Calhoun, Lute Olson, Mike Krzyzewski and even John Chaney, who won his title in Division II. Although the Hall once let in East Coast favorites Pete Carril and Lou Carnesecca, there lately has been less clubbishness in the election process.

It appears the move home to North Carolina both accelerated and cemented Williams' candidacy. He walked into a team with championship-level talent when he returned to Chapel Hill in April 2003: Raymond Felton, Sean May, David Noel, Rashad McCants. The coaching staff added Marvin Williams to the group the following year. That's a ton of talent, but winning with that group was not as easy as even some UNC fans believe.

The players Williams inherited had a sense of entitlement that stemmed from their part in assuring Matt Doherty would be let go after his third season as coach. That had to be coached out of them, and it was hard work for Williams. He spent the better part of two years trying to convince the players, particularly McCants, that true success would develop only from mutual cooperation. As detailed in my piece from the 2005 Final Four, Williams still was teaching that lesson during the national semifinals.

It's hard to know precisely what either roster would have looked like or how either team would have performed had Williams remained at Kansas — and whether he'd have gotten the championship that ultimately pushed him into the Hall.

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The 2003-04 Kansas team, which reached the Elite Eight under Bill Self, probably did as much as it could have with the talent available. Interestingly, though, the 2004-05 team was ranked No. 1 in the preseason. The players Williams left behind — point guard Aaron Miles, wing Keith Langford and power forward Wayne Simien — would have looked mighty good with freshman Marvin Williams joining the lineup in the frontcourt. Marvin would have signed up to play for Roy if he were coaching Point Park University; that one was a done deal. So KU would have been imposing that season.

As it was, KU lost in a stunning first-round NCAA upset to Bucknell and Roy Williams finished the tournament with the championship that had eluded him all those years.

He'll never have his name on the building at North Carolina — the RoyDeanDome just doesn't have the same ring — but the honor Williams gains this weekend will resonate with all basketball fans.

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