Now that Roy Williams is retired, a unique language — ‘Royisms’ — is lost
College basketball will miss Roy Williams ... and his Roy-isms.
A 33-year head coaching career came to an end on Thursday when Williams announced his retirement in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The game will be without a Hall of Fame coach who won three men’s NCAA championships and brought emotion and a unique vernacular to press conferences.
“Dadgum” was a favorite. So was “Frickin,” “Jiminy Christmas” and “blankety-blank” to express displeasure.
Kansas Jayhawks fans heard them first.
Williams spent his first 15 head coaching seasons in Lawrence, and KU faithful got the full Williams dictionary.
Scolding home fans as a “wine and cheese” crowd started at Kansas. Williams first used that to describe a listless Allen FIeldhouse crowd for a Saturday afternoon game against Colorado, and used it on other occasions when challenging the home crowd.
“The place should never be described as a wine-and-cheese crowd, and that’s what it sounded like out there tonight,” Williams said after a 2000 game. If you don’t want to cheer for us, keep your big butts at home.”
It usually worked. Fans responded full-throated.
When Williams was hopeful of landing a recruit or a tournament seed and wished for luck, Williams would use the common phrase “knock on wood,” then tap his fist against his head.
He’d use “St. Mary’s Sisters of the Poor” to compliment an opponent as in, “We didn’t shoot well, but we weren’t playing against St. Mary’s Sisters of the Poor.”
Roy-isms were corny but as genuine as his tears were in NCAA Tournament defeats and dancing with his players in victories.
There may never have been a more emotional locker room than the Jayhawks’ in 1997. Kansas spent 15 weeks ranked first and was the clear NCAA Tournament favorite. But the Jayhawks fell to Arizona in the Sweet 16.
Two decades later, Williams said even induction into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame came with a hollow sense because “I felt like I hadn’t done anything because I couldn’t get those guys to the Final Four,” he said.
Tournament losses were also Williams at his most gracious, to the opponent, but especially his own team. In his final game as the Kansas coach, the 2003 national championship game loss to Syracuse, Williams opened his heart. “This is one of those times that I feel so inadequate as a coach and so inadequate as a person because there’s nothing I can say to change the way my kids feel, nothing that can change the way I feel,” he said.
North Carolina fans didn’t hear much from Williams as an assistant from 1978-88. When he became the Tar Heels’ head coach after the 2003 season, they were treated to the Roy-isms that Kansas fans had known for 15 years.