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Guthridge was a quiet competitor

Bill Guthridge is best known in Chapel Hill as an assistant coach to Dean Smith, but that isn't the complete picture of the legendary coach.

Note: Former University of North Carolina men’s basketball coach Bill Guthridge passed away May 12. He was 77 years old.

Bill Guthridge was consistently portrayed as a quiet gentleman. The picture most Tar Heel fans will have of him is sitting slightly behind Dean Smith, perhaps leaning over to make a point to the head coach. Only in Chapel Hill would a two-time Final Four coach, an Atlantic Coast Conference champion, and a consensus National Coach of the Year award winner be best known as an assistant.

That image of Guthridge is accurate … but not complete. In public, he was never going to be the center of attention. He wasn’t going to entertain a room full of boosters with behind the scenes stories. He wasn’t an electric radio show guest.

But he was also one of the most passionate members of the Carolina basketball family in the last 50 years, and was completely devoted to the Tar Heels, to Smith, and to the University of North Carolina. What you saw was the quiet assistant sitting on the bench. What burned just below that was a fierce competitor who might sometimes react more like a fan than you would expect.

When Smith was needlessly ejected from the 1991 Final Four, it was Guthridge who was furious in the tunnel after the game. When Lefty Driesell declined to shake Smith’s hand in the mid-1980s, it was Guthridge who was incensed—and had to be prevented from chasing down Driesell—not Smith. When Roy Williams declined the opportunity to be Carolina’s head coach in 2000, he had to mend more hurt feelings with Guthridge than with Smith.

The perception of Smith’s program might have been that it ran without emotion. The emotion was there, it’s just that it was often Guthridge providing it. The closest he came to leaving Chapel Hill was 1978, when he verbally accepted the head coaching job at Penn State. But the Tar Heels suffered a soul-crushing NCAA Tournament loss that also ended Phil Ford’s career. Looking around at his devastated players in the locker room, Guthridge realized he simply couldn’t leave.

“Penn State was a good situation,” he said in an interview in 2010. “But I already had a better job than that and I was happy here. So why leave?”

His dry sense of humor was legendary among his players. A Tar Heel passing him in the hallway might greet him with a quick head nod and a greeting of, “Coach.” Guthridge would invariably respond with a similar head nod and, “Player.”

It was Guthridge who was the creator of the well-known and slightly strange departure times for Carolina travel parties. The team bus never left at 2 p.m. It left at 1:57 p.m. His reasoning? People could misinterpret 2 p.m.—perhaps it really meant 1:45, or maybe 2:15. But 1:57 was 1:57.

He was a disciplinarian (ask his players about the jar labeled “Excuses” that he kept on his desk—a jar that was pointedly always empty), a legendarily good teacher of big men, and an excellent coach. It’s often forgotten that he helped engineer the 2000 Final Four run by keeping his team in Charlotte overnight after a disappointing quarterfinal ACC Tournament loss, and pushing them hard in practice on Saturday. When his Tar Heels defeated Tulsa to earn a Final Four berth, the postgame locker room was one of the most emotional in the modern era, due at least partially to the devotion his players had for Guthridge and their joy in relieving–at least for a moment–the criticism he’d taken during the season.

Guthridge was completely committed to Carolina basketball, and he wanted to make sure everyone else in the program felt the same way. His calm demeanor–he could sometimes be found sitting in the stands an hour before road games eating popcorn or a hot dog–masked a passionate love for the Tar Heels. Even 22 years after turning down the Nittany Lions, Guthridge still couldn’t quite bear to leave. When he retired as head coach in 2000, he knew he wouldn’t be able to get through telling his staff about his departure. He handed out handwritten notes instead.

One of the best testaments to Guthridge’s impact came on that retirement day, June 30. One of his most tempestuous relationships had been with guard Shammond Williams, who even walked off the court at Virginia on one occasion. But when Guthridge retired, Williams—then playing with the Seattle Sonics—made the effort to find a commercial flight to Chapel Hill, then flew out again as soon as the press conference was over. They’d had their disagreements, yes. But there was no questioning the depth of their relationship.

Just like Smith, Guthridge found a way to impact his players beyond teaching them offensive and defensive principles.

“I tell people that Coach Smith and Coach Guthridge are my light-skinned fathers,” said Antawn Jamison, who was the National Player of the Year for the 1998 team that Guthridge guided to the Final Four. “Together, they taught us basketball is secondary. They made sure we knew it wasn’t the most important thing in the world, but that we had been given a talent, and it was our job to use it.”

View the photo gallery from goheels.com.

Read the news release.

Statements on the passing of Coach Guthridge:

Carolina Chancellor Carol L. Folt:

“The Carolina community mourns the passing of Bill Guthridge, a great coach, devoted friend and loyal Tar Heel. For more than three decades, Coach Guthridge served this University he loved so much with a deep commitment to academic and athletic excellence. Like his lifelong friend and mentor, Coach Dean Smith, he led by example instilling values of kindness, discipline and a strong work ethic. His legacy lives on in each of the players who were privileged to call him Coach and countless Tar Heels and people across the nation who admired him. We offer our deepest condolences to the Guthridge family as they grieve the loss of a wonderful husband and father.”

Carolina head coach Roy Williams:

“It’s another tremendous loss for our University, our basketball program and our entire community. He was extremely special, important to every player, every coach who ever worked here. He was even more important to me.

“Not only did he coach me on the freshman team, he was my coach, another mentor, a friend, a father figure, a big brother for me just like he was for so many players.

“He was an unbelievable assistant to Coach Smith. Coach Smith had so many strengths and very few weaknesses, and the weaknesses that he did have Coach Guthridge tried to fill. He tried to do every one of those little things that drove Coach Smith crazy. He was a perfect sidekick for Coach Smith.

“He stayed (rather than leave for a head coaching job at another university) because he was enjoying what he was doing and why leave something you know is good for the unknown. At one point he thought he wanted to be a head coach, but he also decided that he really enjoyed Coach Smith and the program here and why should he leave when he has what he thought was the perfect job.”

ACC Commissioner John Swofford:

“Bill was uniquely special. He was a kind soul with a strong, competitive spirit. A relatively quiet man with a wonderful and dry sense of humor. A tremendously loyal person with an ego that was seemingly non-existent. I don’t think I have ever heard of anyone that didn’t like and respect Bill Guthridge. Just a really good man who made Carolina, the ACC and college basketball better.”

Former UNC Director of Athletics Dick Baddour:

“Bill was one of the most respected and admired people I have known. If you played for him you loved him; working with him was a joy. The University of North Carolina has lost a dear friend, as have I, and I know that we will all miss him greatly.”

Former Carolina player Antawn Jamison:

“I’m extremely saddened by the passing of Coach Guthridge, aka “Coach Gut,” especially coming so close to the loss of Coach Smith.  He, like Coach Smith, was more of a mentor and father figure than anything else. His legacy and contributions to my life and to our University will live on and he’ll be much more remembered for his sense of humor and class just as much as his coaching.”

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski:

“It has been a trying time for the University of North Carolina basketball program over the past four months and our thoughts and prayers are with them again today after the passing of Bill Guthridge. Coach Guthridge played an instrumental role in the program’s success as an assistant under Dean Smith for three decades before making his own name as a head coach in leading North Carolina to a pair of Final Four appearances in three seasons. Though he was a head coach for a short time, he gracefully carried on a culture and legacy that many thought could not be perpetuated. We offer our deepest sympathies to Bill’s family, friends and the entire North Carolina basketball community.”