Guthridge emerges from Smith's shadow
By Jim Litke
Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas -- He looks more like their dentist than their
coach.
Quiet?
Not long after North Carolina gave Bill Guthridge the biggest
win of his brief career as a head coach, the silver-haired,
63-year-old wisp of a man slipped out of the Erwin Center late
Sunday afternoon and headed for Kansas to bury his mother. Yet when
Betty Guthridge died earlier this week at age 96, her son didn't
even tell his ballplayers. They found out the next day, when
reporters began asking around for comment.
|  | | Bill Guthridge encourages his Tar Heels during the second half against Tulsa. |
"He's a strong man," said Phil Ford, who's been around the Tar
Heels program as a player or assistant coach for 16 years. "You
have to be a strong man to be the head coach at a place like North
Carolina.
"Even with his mom's passing," Ford added, "he still put the
program first."
Anybody who knows anything about Guthridge knew that, even
before the Heels held off Tulsa 59-55 to send him back to the Final
Four for the second time in his three seasons on the job.
For 30 years, Guthridge sat next to Dean Smith on the Carolina
bench, content to bask in the reflected glow of college
basketball's winningest Division I coach. Then, just weeks before
the 1997-98 season was set to start, Smith stepped down and a
reluctant Guthridge had to be cajoled to step forward.
The journey has taken more than a few twists and turns since: a
Final Four in Guthridge's first season, a first-round knockout by
lowly Weber State in his second and now this, the most improbable,
emotional-fueled run in Carolina's illustrious history.
As he stood in a hallway just a few feet from the locker room
celebration, the memories that came flooding back had little to do
with basketball.
"I don't think my mother even knew that I was the head coach,"
he said quietly. "I told her, and my sister did, too. But with
Alzheimer's you never really know if she heard."
There will be no missing this result, though. Not in
Indianapolis, where the game's annual convention opens next
weekend. And not back in Carolina, where postseason success is
taken for granted and calls for Guthridge's firing began with the
first-round NCAA Tournament loss last year and ricocheted across
Web sites and talk radio every time this season's team went into a
tailspin.
But at the moment when he had every right to blister his
critics, Guthridge apologized instead.
"I had a lot of faith in this team," he said. "I'm sorry it
took us so long to get going, but it couldn't have come at a better
time."
Guthridge might have said the same thing about Joseph Forte, who
along with UNC football player Julius Peppers, are the only
significant additions to the team that couldn't climb over Weber
State. The cold-blooded freshman scored a career-high 28 points
against Tulsa, including 10 in a decisive 14-4 second-half run and
a crucial free throw with 4.1 seconds left.
Not that it's going to get him out of the freshmen's traditional
chores at Carolina -- carrying the team's heavy green training bag
back and forth from the bus to the locker room.
"The fact is," Guthridge said, "we might put some more bricks
in the green bag."
Fear not for Forte. He can handle a heavier load and then some.
Former Tar Heel alum James Worthy was broadcasting the game for CBS
and said he hadn't seen a freshman play with that much poise since
a jug-eared kid named Michael Jordan showed up in Chapel Hill.
You wouldn't know that from listening to Guthridge, though.
Carolina is still run much the same way he and Smith ran it
side-by-side for 30 years. Quietly. No one gets too much credit,
especially the newcomers. No one takes the easy way out. No matter
the situation, the coach sets the example.
Just down the sideline from Guthridge on Sunday, Tulsa coach
Bill Self clapped, screamed, waved and pleaded in the direction of
his ballplayers for much of the game. He is just 37, in his third
year with the Golden Hurricane, still building a resume. A day
earlier, he said his ego wouldn't let him be an assistant for three
decades.
Meanwhile, the man who had done just that, stayed in his chair
most of the afternoon. When the tension wound Guthridge's body so
tight that he had to get up, he took a few steps, then stuck his
hands on his hips and tried to look at ease. It worked well enough
on his kids during the game; afterward was another story.
Asked whether this trip to the Final Four meant more than the
previous ones, Guthridge tried to recall the years and the teams
Carolina met, but quickly made a mess of the whole thing.
"I'm a little shook up, obviously," he said. "But I'm
thrilled to be going." |
