Roy Williams is one of the great coaches in basketball history and now belongs to a club exclusive enough to say so.
The North Carolina coach achieved his 900th career victory on Saturday, with a 78-70 victory over Florida State No. 11. Williams is the fifth male college basketball coach to cross the threshold at the Division I level, joining Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Jim Calhoun and Bob Knight.
After the game, UNC presented Williams with a personalized shirt to commemorate the achievement.
Williams said he enjoyed the achievement after the game, but was quick to give credit to his players and assistant coaches.
From ESPN:
“It’s cool and I thank all the players who have already been involved in these things,” said Williams. “My assistant coaches, for 33 years, felt like I had the best coaching staff in the world and I believe in that every day. But it was good.”
Williams is the fastest coach to achieve 900 wins, having done so in his 1,161th game as a head coach. The next fastest: Krzyzewski with 1,183.
Between his time at UNC and Kansas, Williams is also the only trainer in that group to achieve all his victories purely as a power conference trainer (Krzyzewski and Knight started in the Army, Calhoun started at Northeastern and Jim Boeheim took over Syracuse when he was still an independent ).
Legendary Dean Smith’s assistant (879 wins) for 10 years, Williams started as head coach in Kansas in 1988. After 15 seasons that still place him on the Jayhawks’ all-time winning list, Williams has stepped back to UNC to take on a program that had battled Matt Doherty. He led the Tar Heels to the national championship in his second year and has since won two more titles at Chapel Hill.
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