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Roy Williams, head coach of the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team, the Tar Heels, has the highest winning percentage in NCAA history. Over the last seven years, the 58-year-old Asheville, N.C., native—who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007—has won 205 games, including 24 in the NCAA Tournament. That’s more Final Fours, more wins, and more NCAA Tournament victories than any basketball coach in the nation.
Hard Work tells the story of Roy Williams’ life that few people know, in Williams’ own distinct and colorful way—his troubled upbringing, his college years, his years of trying to make ends meet before becoming a head coach. It reveals how determination took him from an impoverished home in the mountains of North Carolina to the very pinnacle of coaching success, culminating in the 2009 NCAA National Championship (his second in five years). And it pulls back the curtain on one of college basketball’s most guarded programs as witnessed by one of the most successful, dominant coaches, at the prime of his power.
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Coach Williams describes himself as the most competitive person on earth, admitting that he once got into a game of pool with Michael Jordan that nearly ended in a fistfight. In addition to providing a fresh look at Jordan, Hard Work will chronicle Williams’ connection with such basketball luminaries as Paul Pierce, Kirk Hinrich, Jacque Vaughn, Phil Ford, James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Sean May, and Rashad McCants, along with Tyler Hansbrough and Ty Lawson, all of whom Williams credits with having earned him the highest winning percentage in NCAA history.
HardWork is an inspirational story of what can be achieve by anyone who commits to a dream.
Williams, the men's basketball coach at the University of Kansas (1988–2003) and at the University of North Carolina (2003–present), describes his personal and professional path to a Hall of Fame coaching career and two national championships.
Ignored by his abusive, drunken father and raised primarily by a cash-strapped, saintly single mother, Williams paid for his college education at UNC by officiating intramural sports.
When Dean Smith, that school's legendary basketball coach, offered Williams a low-paying job on his coaching staff, Williams accepted and sold calendars and delivered videotapes to TV stations to feed his family.
As a head coach, Williams's dedication extends to landing recruits and running organized, thorough practices. And he's done all this while maintaining a cohesive family life. (He's married to his college sweetheart.) Well-intentioned and upbeat, the book treads the familiar ground of glossy, inspirational sports biographies.
Williams recalls passionate speeches, great players (i.e., Michael Jordan, James Worthy) and various anecdotes from the coaching life, but never delivers consistent insight on the workings of a successful coach at two legendary sports programs.
However, the book is redeemed by Williams's genial (and borderline hokey) tone and the forthright revelations of his tumultuous childhood and early days coaching in high school and college. 16-page photo insert.
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A Hall of Fame college-basketball coach chronicles his rise from poor son of an alcoholic father to winner of two national championships at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina. It's difficult to take seriously a man who habitually eschews curse words in favor of epithets like "dadgum," so it's fortunate that Williams has built up serious credibility during his distinguished career as the head coach at UNC and the University of Kansas.
Williams' aw-shucks demeanor masks the inner fury of an intense competitor, a man so driven to win that he invents new competitions just to give himself another chance at victory. A near-perfect embodiment of the American Dream, he endured a hardscrabble youth dominated by a violent father-who ultimately abandoned the family-before climbing down out of a family tree filled with far more scoundrels than scholars.
The scrappy Williams overcame those inherent disadvantages and carved out a niche for himself as a junior-varsity player at UNC, foregoing varsity scholarships at smaller schools, before giving up his playing career to focus on coaching. While on-court emotion and intensity account for much of his success, these attributes sometimes overpower the narrative.
Williams' unrelenting desire to convey his earnest belief in hard work and love for his family, friends and players (Tyler Hansbrough in particular) is as cloying as it is compelling-he opens by recalling bouts of insomnia prior to the 2009 season brought about because he so desperately wanted Hansbrough to win a championship in his senior season.
Still, the legions of Carolina fans will relish stories-including the recruitment of Michael Jordan-from Williams' days as an assistant under legendary coach Dean Smith; college-basketball fans will admire his tenaciousness; and Kansas fans may finally forgive ol' Roy for leaving (well, maybe not). Williams coaches far better than he writes, but he does spin a good yarn.
"... First of all, I'm biased. I'm a UNC grad and big basketball fan. But I'm a bigger fan of Roy Williams. This book confirms everything I always believed about Roy...that he's a great coach, loving father and devoted husband. What surprised me are the numerous obstacles he had to overcome to achieve his success.
This book reveals his folksy humor, his love of family and home and the ideals that make him a man of great character. Williams' commitment to his dream is exemplified by the hard work he put in to achieve it.
It's a quick read. You do NOT have to be an "x's and o's" fan of basketball to understand and enjoy Hard Work. Now that Tiger Woods has fallen from the pedestal upon which his adoring public misguidedly placed him, Roy Williams can sit comfortably there.
However, I'm sure he would not agree that he belongs perched higher than the rest of us, because ultimately, he's just a good ol' boy who continues to work harder than 99 percent of the rest of us.
If you're looking for inspiration, read Hard Work! ..."
"... Roy Williams' story is honest, sincere, self-effacing, insightful, and engaging. It also provides a stirring road map on how to live life, not simply on the basketball court, but off of it. In a professional world routinely drowning in greed and excess, here is a role model to be treasured by anyone in any walk of life. ..." Reader Reviews
From the Inside Flap
One of the most respected and successful basketball coaches in the nation, Coach Roy Williams traveled an unlikely path to a career that boasts the highest winning percentage among all active college coaches.
Now, for the first time, he tells the story of his life, from his turbulent childhood to the North Carolina Tar Heels 2009 national championship season. With unbridled honesty, Williams recounts his rough early years in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
During the troubled times of his adolescence, Roy s escape was a basketball court whether it was a neighbor s dirt court or the local school gym where he d shoot for hours at night.
There was nowhere else to go, but as it turned out, no place he d rather be. The first in his family to go to college, Williams wound up at the University of North Carolina with the dream of becoming a coach and learning under the celebrated Dean Smith.
He also recalls his long tenure as head coach at the University of Kansas and his two heart-wrenching decisions to stay in Kansas at the program he built, and later, to return to UNC, to the one that built him and the accusations that followed both.
Williams autobiography lays plain how he recruits, teaches, and motivates his players, and how he s shepherded teams through some of the most nail-biting games at both Kansas and UNC.
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His approach helped earn him the third-highest winning percentage in NCAA history: better than Mike Krzyzewski, Bobby Knight, and even John Wooden. So far, the Hall of Famer has coached in seven Final Fours, winning two NCAA championships in the last five seasons.
In Hard Work, Williams reveals the determination that took him from the humblest of beginnings to the pinnacle of coaching success, sharing his story because he believes that anyone can be inspired by its message: hard work really can make dreams come true.
About the Author
Roy Allen Williams (born August 1, 1950) is head coach of the men's basketball team at the University of North Carolina.
After averaging about an 80% win percentage in 15 seasons at the University of Kansas, he became the eighteenth head coach at North Carolina when he replaced Matt Doherty in 2003.
He is second all-time for most wins at Kansas behind Phog Allen and at North Carolina behind his mentor Dean Smith. Additionally, he is third all-time in the NCAA for winning percentage.
Williams has taken his teams to seven Final Fours in his careers at Kansas and North Carolina (fourth all-time in NCAA history).
Williams has also won at least one game in the NCAA Tournament for 20 consecutive years (all-time record) and has led his teams at Kansas and North Carolina to 20 consecutive NCAA Tournaments (second all-time).
Williams holds the active record for consecutive NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament appearances, and is the winningest active coach by percentage among coaches with at least 10 years experience.
His teams have a 600-139 record, a win percentage of .811. He earned his 400th win in January 2003, when Kansas beat the University of Wyoming. Coach Williams won his 500th career game against High Point University on December 9, 2006 in Chapel Hill.
On November 29, 2009, Williams earned his 600th career victory by defeating the University of Nevada. Williams became only the 33rd coach in Division I Men's Basketball history, as well as the third-fastest, to achieve at least 600 career wins.
On April 4, 2005, Williams shed his title as "the most successful coach to never have won an NCAA ring"[11] as his Tar Heels defeated the University of Illinois in the 2005 NCAA Championship game. He would again lead them to victory 4 years later, defeating the Michigan State Spartans in the 2009 NCAA Championship game on April 6, 2009.
Williams was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.
• Authors: Roy Williams and Tim Crothers • Binding: Hardcover • Number of Pages: 288 pages • Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill • Publishing Date: November, 2009 • Language: English
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