<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Roy Williams, who followed a national championship season at North Carolina by leading an inexperienced team to a Top 10 finish, was selected coach of the year by The Associated Press on Friday. Williams, who won the award in 1992 at Kansas, is the second coach to win it at two schools, joining Eddie Sutton, who won at Arkansas in 1978 and Kentucky in 1989. He is the seventh coach to win it more than once, with UCLA's John Wooden the record holder at five times from 1967 to 1973. "Fourteen years ago I thought it was neat to win this award, and now I'm so much more appreciative of it," Williams said Friday. "From the first day of practice this team was fun to coach yet they were focused on what they had to do." The Tar Heels won the national title last season, Williams' second at his alma mater. The top seven scorers from that team either graduated or left early for the NBA and North Carolina wasn't even ranked in the preseason poll. Led by freshman Tyler Hansbrough, the Tar Heels went 23-8 and were ranked 10th in the final poll, finishing second in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Williams received 29 votes from the 72-member national media panel that selects the weekly Top 25. Jay Wright of Villanova had 15 votes to finish second in the balloting that was conducted before the NCAA tournament. Bruce Pearl of Tennessee was third with 11 votes. </div> Source
Congrats to him for winning it, but I think it shoulda been either Bruce Pearl, Larranaga or Billy Donovan that won it.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting GatorsowntheSEC:</div><div class="quote_post">Congrats to him for winning it, but I think it shoulda been either Bruce Pearl, Larranaga or Billy Donovan that won it.</div> It should have went to Ben Howland of UCLA.
I already sounded off on it in C.K.'s article when he picked Williams as Coach of the Year too, so I'll just copy and paste that; no need to reword it: Roy Williams for coach of the year? Yeah, he got his young team to finish the season in the rankings, but even though they were young, they still had something that a lot of coaches didn't have: talent. Look at what coaches like Bruce Pearl and Pat Flannery have done, especially Flannery who only had a few scholarship players on his roster, yet thanks mostly to his offensive philosophy of slowing the game down, won a Patriot League title, was awarded a #9 seed, and pulled off a first round upset over Arkansas. If anyone's deserving of the award, it's Flannery.
