In February, the college basketball community said a long and heartfelt goodbye to Dean Smith, who later surprised his players with the beautiful gesture of giving them $200 to enjoy a dinner. Smith’s imprint — on life, basketball, and the University of North Carolina — was so large that he’ll continue to be talked about for years to come.
Smith deserves such recognition, and it’s unquestionable that his life — being as impactful as it was in realms far beyond the court — demands continued attention on so many levels. Bill Guthridge can’t hope to compete with Smith, and for that reason, his name won’t be as durable when the pages of time continue to turn. Decades from now, his name won’t have as much staying power, a point which doesn’t need to be discussed.
What does need to be discussed — at least once — is Guthridge’s contribution to North Carolina as a head basketball coach, Smith’s successor on the sidelines he occupied for many years.
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Guthridge, who died last week at the age of 77, accompanied Smith on the bench in Chapel Hill for a long time. In the early 1980s, you saw four accomplished basketball men sitting together: Smith, Guthridge, Roy Williams, and Eddie Fogler.
Posted this on Coach Smith's passing, bears a repeat today. What a coaching staff back in the 1980s. (Hugh Morton) pic.twitter.com/sPsw9IO4FO
— Lee Pace (@LeePaceTweet) May 13, 2015
One player coached by Carolina’s fabulous foursome of basketball minds was Matt Doherty, a member of the 1982 team that brought Smith (and Guthridge) a first national title in Chapel Hill. Doherty’s tenure as North Carolina’s head coach in the early 2000s could not have been more disastrous. Those years were so bad that Roy Williams was asked to “come home” and save the program, in order to repair the damage done by Doherty. Williams left Kansas — which he loved deeply — to restore the Tar Heels, and quickly matched Smith’s two national titles in the span of six seasons.
Frank McGuire, Dean Smith, Bill Guthridge, Roy Williams — all four men delivered greatness in varying degrees to North Carolina basketball from the bench, with Doherty being the one coach who couldn’t cut it at UNC. Sure, Guthridge isn’t a giant, in contrast to the other men on that list. Nevertheless, the reality that his head coaching tenure was more a success than a failure — and by a rather large margin — is something to celebrate as Guthridge’s life is remembered.
The bulk of his career was spent supporting Smith as an assistant, but when the Dean of North Carolina turned over the program to his friend, it is very much worth noting that Bill Guthridge maintained the standards the Tar Heels and their fans expect to meet.
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It is clear that Smith — who made it a point to leave the program in good hands when he stepped down following the 1996-’97 season — made good on his commitment to pass the baton to a successor who had a full boat of talent at his disposal. Guthridge reached the Final Four in 1998 — not necessarily a spectacular achievement, but something which could be labeled as “successfully getting out of the way.” You could view that season as unremarkable in a coaching context, and you would be right to do so. The one point worth advancing on Guthridge’s behalf is that many other successors of legends have not been able to carry on a winning tradition with nearly as much smoothness or dependability. That’s the defining aspect of Guthridge’s 1998 season.
In remembering his three brief years as the man in charge in Chapel Hill (1997 through 2000), it’s not the 1998 season which stands out, however. The lingering memory comes from the 2000 campaign, when it began to seem that Guthridge was out of his depth… only for “Coach Gut” to permanently change the way his head coaching career is remembered.
We saw Michigan State make the Final Four as a No. 7 seed this past spring. A year ago, John Calipari led Kentucky to the title game as a No. 8 seed following a regular season filled with massive failures and frustrations. Nearly a decade and a half before Izzo and Calipari orchestrated memorable March runs which expunged a winter’s worth of discontents, Guthridge did the very same thing.
North Carolina fans were beside themselves when the 2000 ACC season crawled toward its conclusion. UNC was a No. 1 seed in 1998 and a No. 3 seed in 1999, so a No. 8 seed in 2000 was utterly unacceptable. A feeling of impending doom permeated the program. The fact that North Carolina was kept closer to home than top-seeded Stanford in a potential round-of-32 South Region game was a small advantage in the Tar Heels’ corner, but North Carolina had to do two things to make that factor become meaningful:
First, UNC had to get out of the 8-9 game against Missouri with its season intact.
Second, The Tar Heels had to play well enough against Stanford to get a Birmingham crowd behind them.
They achieved both goals, and as a result, they became the second team to excuse a top seed out of the 2000 NCAA Tournament. (Wisconsin had knocked off Arizona in the West Region earlier in the round of 32.)
The Tar Heels’ win advanced their own cause, but that win over Stanford also changed the course of college basketball because it set in motion a series of seasons in which Stanford would fail to make the Final Four as a No. 1 seed. The Cardinal could have left a much greater mark on the sport in the first five years of the 21st century, but Mike Montgomery’s team fell short of the Final Four three times as a top seed — in 2001 and 2004, but first in 2000. Bill Guthridge was the first coach to outfox Stanford in March when the Cardinal had a “[1]” next to their place on a bracket sheet.
Once North Carolina got to the South Regional in Austin, the balance of power had shifted. North Carolina looked like the team with the higher-end talent than fourth-seeded Tennessee. In Birmingham against Missouri and Stanforrd, the Tar Heels were a team trying to save face. That situation brought with it a specific form of pressure. In Austin against Tennessee, Carolina was trying to seize an unexpected opportunity. That circumstance carried a different kind of stress.
The Tar Heels were worthy of that challenge in the Sweet 16, and as a result, they prevented Tennessee from making its first-ever Final Four. As you can see, North Carolina spent the 2000 NCAA Tournament altering college basketball history. In the 2000 Elite Eight, it did one more thing to change the complexion of the sport, affecting one of its brightest current head coaches.
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Tulsa is currently coached by Frank Haith, a relationship which — if history is a guide — won’t end very well. It is fascinating to imagine how different the Golden Hurricane might have become (for both coaching candidates and recruits) if they had won the 2000 South Regional final against North Carolina.
The coach of that 2000 Tulsa team is someone at the center of every college basketball season and NCAA tournament these days. Bill Self, before moving to Illinois and before winning at least a share of 11 consecutive Big 12 regular-season championships, led Tulsa within one game of the 2000 Final Four. Before Jim Larranaga at George Mason in 2006, Brad Stevens at Butler (twice), and Shaka Smart at VCU in 2011, Tulsa could have struck a blow for the little guy in 2000. However, Guthridge and North Carolina — doing something Roy Williams couldn’t do in 2006 (lost to George Mason), and which Self couldn’t do in 2011 (losing to VCU with Kansas in the NCAAs) — withstood the pressure attached to playing a less-heralded school in possession of house money.
What do we have in the end? We have a portrait of a coach — Bill Guthridge — who reached two Final Fours in three seasons, a coach who won as a favorite and as an underdog. Guthridge won the first two games of the 2000 NCAA Tournament from a desperate position. He won the second two games of the 2000 Big Dance as a coach pursuing an opportunity but facing considerable blowback if he failed to reach the Final Four in Indianapolis.
Guthridge upheld the identity of North Carolina as an achiever in college basketball, a program which gains the spotlight and leaves non-Final Four schools (Tennessee) or “little guys” (Tulsa) to lament what might have been. He reached a Final Four from a position of strength (1998), and then scrambled to make the Final Four with two strong weeks in 2000, much as John Calipari did with Kentucky last year.
Bill Guthridge spent most of his basketball life as an assistant… and for three seasons, he successfully assisted North Carolina in its attempt to remain relevant in college basketball. This is a small chapter in the larger life of both the Tar Heels and the sport that matters so much to them, but it was far more a beautiful chapter than a sad one.
That’s worth noting, as we say goodbye to Coach Gut.
