"There's a number of people, a number of Carolina people that are in the basketball business, I have tremendous respect for them. But that doesn't mean that he and Chancellor Guskiewicz, who will be making the decision, won't have help. We've had it in the family for a long period of time, and that is important, but it's not the only factor in trying to make a decision like this."Ĭunningham won't be hiring an expensive search firm to help him. "The history and tradition here is winning. I think that is part of it, and I think time and circumstance is all part of that as well," Cunningham said. We need to spend a great deal of time thinking about who is the right person right now. "I believe we've got the best job in college basketball, and this job doesn't come open very often. There's not as obvious a successor now with Chapel Hill roots.Ĭunningham understands the importance of that connection to fans, but he also knows that more important to them is winning. Williams was always the obvious successor, if he was willing to take the job, basically since Smith decided to retire because everyone knew Guthridge wouldn't coach much longer. Well, now is a different time in college basketball. Then Bill Guthridge, a longtime Smith assistant.
Even Dean Smith had come from McGuire's staff as an assistant. Carolina hasn't hired a coach that was from outside of the "family", so to speak, since it hired Frank McGuire back in 1953. Now that he's back in Chapel Hill, he is facing one of the biggest hires a Carolina athletic director has had to make since - well, since hiring Roy Williams, frankly.Īnd he'll have to do that while delicately balancing all of the competing interests that go into hiring a Carolina basketball coach. Williams won't be able to go back to Indianapolis, since he'd need seven days of negative tests. He didn't even tell his own wife until Wednesday. He called his assistant for a flight home from Indianapolis, but he couldn't even tell his assistant the reason. He couldn't reach out to potential coaching candidates to gauge their interest. Williams wanted to tell his staff and his team first, and Cunningham knew if he told even 1-2 of the wrong people, it would get out. "and today was the outcome of that decision that he made."Įven though Cunningham knew this would happen, he couldn't do some of the back-channel things athletic directors can do during coaching searches because it had to stay a secret. "Every once in a while, Coach can be a bit stubborn, and so he was committed," Cunningham said. But his mind was basically already made up. Guskiewicz implored Williams to wait 24 hours. He implored Williams to talk to Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, who was in Chapel Hill. "Unfortunately, the more I talked to him, I think the more convinced he was he was going to retire," Cunningham said.
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