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The Breakfast Buffet: Roy Williams went out on his terms

Who’s hungry for college basketball?

Here’s today’s installment of “The Breakfast Buffet”, a daily column that can be found here every single morning getting you caught up to date on everything that’s happened from the day/night before and everything that’s going to happen in the next 24 hours.

Mangia!

Things To Sample

Roy Williams went out on his terms
College basketball lost one of its truly great figures on Thursday, when Williams opted to retire at the age of 70. The Hall-of-Famer only worked at two places during his career — Kansas and North Carolina — and had incredible success at both. Beyond his three national titles with the Tar Heels, Williams will be best remembered for the great players that he recruited, his relentless secondary break, and the emotion that he coached with during each and every game. He will be missed.

A new era could be coming at North Carolina
Not since Frank McGuire have the Tar Heels hired a coach who didn’t have previous ties to their basketball family. Will that happen again in the next couple of days? Quite possibly if North Carolina opts to hire someone outside of its immediate circle. For nearly 60 years, the Tar Heels have always had a coach in place that had a direct tie to its history. Dean Smith was an assistant before becoming the head coach and his successor Bill Guthridge was his assistant. Matt Doherty played for the Tar Heels before becoming head coach in 2000 and three years later Roy Williams returned to Chapel Hill where he was once an assistant under Smith. If the Tar Heels opt to hire someone outside the family instead of someone like current assistant Hubert Davis or UNC Greensboro’s Wes Miller, it will break a trend that has lasted for the last six decades. 

The burden on Chris Beard’s successor at Texas Tech is going to be immense
You never want to be “the guy that follows that guy” in sports, but Texas Tech’s next head coach is going to be “the guy that follows the guy”. In a short period of time, Beard made the Red Raiders into a national brand prior to taking the Texas job on Thursday. He led Texas Tech to within inches of a national title two years ago in 2019 and also reached the Elite Eight during the previous season and lost to eventual national champion Villanova. Prior to Beard’s arrival, this program primarily operated in obscurity. It’s going to take a special person to keep the Red Raiders at the level that they’ve enjoyed over the last half decade. 

Houston’s matchup with Baylor is personal
This is more than a Final Four game — it’s an in-state matchup where a team from the American Athletic Conference gets a neutral court opportunity against a team from the Big 12. That’s not something that happens with great regularity. Many of Houston’s players weren’t recruited by Baylor and the way that the Cougars play reflects that type of disrespect. Expect Houston to play with an additional layer of toughness on Saturday night. This game is personal and can only enhance the perception of the Cougars’ program if they can advance to Monday night with a victory. 

Early preseason rankings are going to be meaningless for a while
How long is a while? Probably a few months. With immediate eligibility, the NCAA adding an additional year of eligibility for all players, and the NBA Draft process, it’s going to be a long time until rosters are even remotely close to aligned for next season. I normally spend months trying to formulate a skeleton of what the upcoming year could look like and then release it after the national title game. This year that doesn’t seem entirely realistic given the circumstances.

Leftovers: