WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Roy Williams uses expletive, apologizes during postgame press conference

By Sam Rosenthal

Feb 19, 2009

During Roy Williams’ press conference following his Tar Heels’ 89-80 victory against N.C. State Wednesday night, the coach used a profane word. 

On the air, in front of a room full of reporters, cameras, microphones and recorders, some of which carried live signals to various media outlets, Williams uttered the F-word.

It’s important to understand the context: A reporter asked Williams about the team’s full-court pressure, which has struggled, and it obviously struck a nerve with the coach.

“We stink at [full-court pressing],” Williams said. “I’m not the brightest guy in the world, but I’m not going to continue playing full-court press, and every dad-gum time we do it, they lay it up and get a wide open shot.”

The reporter followed up by asking: “Why do you think they stink at it, as you say, especially considering the fact that there are a lot of veteran guys out there?”

Williams' response was as follows: “If I knew the answer to that,” Williams said, “do you still think we’d be (expletive) stinking?”

Everyone in the room broke out in laughter, and Williams followed up his verbal lapse by saying, “Everybody strike that f-word, I meant to say ‘frickin.’ Seriously, if you think I could figure it out, don’t you think I would do it?”

It was Williams at his rawest, as candid as you’ll probably ever see him. “We double-team friendly,” he said, emphasizing friendly and gesturing wildly with his hands and grinning. He mocked what his players did, in his opinion, when they full-court pressed against the Pack Wednesday night: “I’m double-teaming you! I know you’re 17 feet away from me, but I’m double-teaming you over here. Jiminy Christmas.”

Williams said he wanted to get off the subject, chuckled, and added, “I am not happy about our double team. I am not happy about our frickin’ press.”

And that’s the message that he probably wanted to disseminate, through the media, to his players: They need to press better.

“I can’t believe I said that,” Williams said. “I don’t say that anywhere except on the golf course, and not very often then. Jiminy Christmas.”