Making Moves

from Born & Bred // November 2021 // Hubert Davis

Staff Profiles

1961: Frank McGuire to Dean Smith

By the time Frank McGuire left Carolina for the Philadelphia Warriors, assistant coach Dean Smith had already distinguished himself both on and off the court.

McGuire hired Smith one year after the Tar Heels won the 1957 national championship, defeating Smith’s beloved Kansas

Jayhawks. When assistant coach Buck Freeman left Chapel Hill,

McGuire remembered Smith, who had sheepishly admitted to

McGuire the night of the championship game that Smith had rooted for Kansas instead of Carolina.

As a Carolina assistant, Smith’s acumen for the game was readily apparent. McGuire once went on a five-day recruiting trip to New York, and by the time he returned, Smith had installed and taught a completely new defense, the point zone. It became the primary defense of the 1959 Tar Heels and a key element of

McGuire’s book, Defensive Basketball.

Smith also showed a knack for detail-oriented administrative tasks. When the NCAA sanctioned the Carolina basketball program in 1960 for excessive recruiting expenditures, it was Smith who was appointed to compile the paperwork for the school’s appeal to college sports’ governing body. Although the council was impressed with Carolina’s appeal, even noting, “This board has never heard a more thorough and detailed defense of a university’s position than we did today,” the sanctions were upheld and the Tar Heels were placed under a one-year probation. McGuire was placed on notice by Chancellor William Aycock that his off-the-court performance over the next year would be critical to the renewal of his contract. Several weeks later, he left for the Warriors.

McGuire recommended Smith as his replacement even though the newly minted Warriors head coach believed it would be difficult to compete at Carolina under the cloud of new Universityimposed sanctions—due partially to a gambling scandal centered at NC State—which included limiting the recruitment of players from outside the ACC region to two per year. Those concerns were allayed by the granite support of Aycock, who saw Smith through several crises early in his career.

1997: Dean Smith to Bill Guthridge

2000: Bill Guthridge to Matt Doherty

The timing made this one unique. In early October of 1997, all the attention concerning Carolina basketball was on the loaded roster that returned from a Final Four run, including Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter and Ed Cota.

Then, suddenly, Smith announced he was retiring. He was 66 years old, so it wasn’t unlikely that he’d be ready to retire. He’d told the incoming class of recruits that it was possible that at some point in their four years, he wouldn’t be their coach. But by October, most Carolina fans thought the time to worry had passed.

Just as Smith had hoped, Guthridge was immediately announced as the next head coach. There was no time for a search—practice began in a week.

The transition to Guthridge was relatively seamless, as you’d expect from a coach who had worked beside Smith for three decades. Guthridge guided the Tar Heels to the Final Four in 1998, buoyed by a sensational season from Jamison. He was named consensus National Coach of the Year.

Despite leading Carolina to two Final Fours in three seasons as head coach, Bill Guthridge mentioned retirement several times in the weeks following his team’s national semifinal run in the spring of 2000. He made a decision: he’d work through the program’s three weeks of summer basketball camps to see if the constant hive of campers, gyms and counselors reenergized him.

It didn’t, and Guthridge announced his retirement on June 30. He became so emotional when addressing his team that he couldn’t say the words and simply handed them a sheet of paper informing them of his retirement.

Guthridge’s departure began a weeklong pursuit of Roy Williams, who ultimately decided to stay at Kansas. That left athletic director

Dick Baddour with a young, up-and-coming coach who seemed to be a solid fallback candidate: Matt Doherty. The member of the 1982 national champions had just finished his first season at Notre Dame, where he had guided the Fighting Irish to the NIT.

There were some within the Carolina basketball family who were not convinced of Doherty’s readiness to guide a program like the Tar Heels, but Doherty likewise wasn’t certain it was a jump he wanted to make.

That is, until he received a call from former teammate Michael Jordan. The greatest player in basketball history told Doherty the program needed him, because the next step after Doherty might be outside the family.

The transition to Doherty was the only change in modern (post-1957) program history that brought in a coach who was not on the existing coaching staff or hadn’t been an assistant coach at Carolina previously. It was also the rockiest, as Doherty imported his own coaching staff while parting ways with incumbent assistants who were members of the Carolina family.

There were high points—most notably a road win over Duke in his first season—but Doherty himself has admitted he made some short-sighted mistakes in taking over the program and in his management of Tar Heel basketball during his three seasons.

2003: Matt Doherty to Roy Williams

Three years later, Carolina was in pursuit of Williams again. Doherty’s departure from Carolina was announced as a resignation, but he left after missing the NCAA Tournament two seasons in a row and with an unsettled atmosphere around Tar Heel basketball. Current players were considering transferring and former players were no longer returning to Chapel Hill as frequently in the summer. Both on and off the court, it was harder to find the characteristics that make Carolina basketball unique.

Doherty’s resignation was announced on April 1. At that point, Williams’ Kansas team was still alive in the NCAA Tournament, where they would eventually lose the national championship game to Syracuse.

There was a healthy contingent of Carolina fans who believed another chase for the Asheville native would be futile. But life in Lawrence had changed. Kansas supporters had forced out athletic director Bob Frederick, a close Williams friend, because of perceived fund-raising and football weaknesses. Frederick was replaced by Al Bohl, who immediately proved to be a better fund-raiser but, more importantly, to have a special talent for getting on people’s nerves.

There were other reasons to return to Chapel Hill. Williams had two ailing family members living in the area, and to a man who prizes family, that was a significant detail. Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich, two Jayhawks with whom Williams had developed a father-son relationship, were graduating.

After again agonizing about the decision, Williams this time chose to return. He was greeted by a throng of ecstatic Carolina fans at the Smith Center on the evening of his press conference, and he immediately began rectifying some of the problems that had plagued the Doherty regime.

“There is only one source for Carolina basketball,” Williams said about two weeks after his hiring, “and that is me. That was one of the problems that made it so difficult here before. There were so many sources. It came out that Matt was doing this or Matt was doing that, and somebody forgot to ask Matt.”

Williams also initiated plans for a Carolina Basketball Alumni Reunion, an extremely popular weekend that helped reconnect past and current players. By the summer of 2004, former players were again flocking to the Smith Center, and by the spring of 2005, the program had its first national championship since 1993.

A 40-YEAR DECISION

FOOTBALL LETTERMEN SUPPORT PROGRAM WITH NAMED SPACES AT KENAN STADIUM

DA’NORRIS SEARCY, 2007-10 • DEFENSIVE BACKS MEETING ROOM

The defensive backs meeting room in Kenan Football Center is now named in honor of Da’Norris Searcy, a 2007-10 safety and kick returner who went on to play nearly a decade in the NFL. Searcy made a significant gift to the Carolina football program and is recognized in signage outside the room used by the “Rude Boys” - as the Tar Heel defensive backs have been known for three decades.

“Carolina got a kid out of a tough situation and gave me an opportunity to better myself as a person,” says Searcy, who signed in Butch Davis’ first recruiting class from his home in Decatur, Ga. “I experienced so much and learned so much. I wanted to experience new things, new places, different people. Chapel Hill opened my mind to so much more than just Atlanta. It gave me a sense that the world is bigger than just my neighborhood. I just want to give back and leave a lasting legacy for ‘The Rude Boys’ and the Carolina football program.”

HAKEEM NICKS, 2006-08 • WIDE RECEIVERS MEETING ROOM

Nicks retired after the 2015 season after a seven-year NFL career that included a Super Bowl ring with the New York Giants and 356 career receptions for more than 5,000 yards.

His legacy now lives on in the Kenan Football Center after having made a generous contribution to name the wide receiver meeting room.

“It’s always good to be able to give back if you’re in that position,” says Nicks, who lives in his hometown of Charlotte. “I owe a lot to the University of North Carolina. They were the only school to offer me a scholarship (I committed before my senior year). They gave me the opportunity, and that means a lot to me. They believed in me before anyone else did.”

“They prepared me for life beyond Carolina, particularly going to a market like New York in the NFL. Things like having a presence, how to carry yourself, to be humble, to interact with the media. We had a seminar on dinner etiquette. There were so many things I faced that I was prepared for because of the University of North Carolina.”