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Roy Williams Elected to Basketball Hall of Fame

Apr 3, 2007

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Roy Williams is now officially a hall of fame coach.

The Tar Heel head man was among the seven members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2007 announced Monday.

Williams is the eighth Tar Heel coach or player to be elected to the Hall of Fame. Previous inductees are coaches Ben Carnevale, Frank McGuire, Dean Smith and Larry Brown. In addition, player/coach Billy Cunningham and players James Worthy and Robert McAdoo are already members of the Hall.

Stay tuned to InsideCarolina.com for complete coverage of Williams' 5 p.m. Monday press conference with the media.

Thye other members of Williams' class are Phil Jackson, who led the Lakers and Bulls to a record nine NBA titles; the 1966 NCAA championship team from Texas Western; four-time WNBA Championship coach Van Chancellor; referee Mendy Rudolph and international coaches Fedro Ferrandiz and Mirko Novosel. The announcements were made in Atlanta, where the NCAA Final Four championship is being played.

Jackson and Texas Western were elected in their first year of consideration for election into the Hall of Fame. Novosel, Rudolph and Williams were first-time finalists this year who had previously been reviewed by Screening Committees. Chancellor and Ferrandiz had been named finalists in prior years.

To be elected, a finalist needs 18 of 24 votes from the Honors Committee for election. The Class of 2007 will be inducted during festivities in Springfield, Mass., Sept. 6-8, 2007.

Williams, a native of Asheville, is the third coach in history to lead two schools to an NCAA National Championship game. He led Kansas and North Carolina to a total of five Final Fours (1991, 1993, 2002, 2003, 2005), three national title games (1991, 2003, 2005), and won an NCAA Championship with North Carolina in 2005.

Williams also played on the freshman team at North Carolina and was an assistant in Chapel Hill before accepting the head coaching job at Kansas in 1988.

His teams have made 18 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, winning at least one tournament game in each. Williams is a six-time national coach of the year, and in his 18-plus years of coaching, he has become the fastest coach ever to reach the 500 win mark.