When Roy Williams had gone to Chapel Hill, he was searching for a sign to tell him it was OK to leave Kansas. On his return to Lawrence, he was now looking for one that said it was OK to say no to North Carolina.

The Kansas fans had thought the same thing. In a unique, genuine outpouring of emotion, fans had taped letters of support to every window and door of Allen Field House and the adjacent Parrot Athletic Center and Wagnon Student-Athlete Center, where the basketball offices are located. Messages were scribbled in chalk on the sidewalks, fans were walking around or sitting in lawn chairs on the grass outside the buildings, doing anything to be close to the situation. Nobody was there for a specific reason (other than the various television trucks, who hoped to catch a glimpse of something newsworthy) but all felt compelled to be there.

"The Williams Watch" put the eyes of the nation on Lawrence.

At around 11:00 that night, Williams drove to the campus to see for himself the letters and messages. "I went and walked around a little bit and they asked me if I'd be on the news and I told them no and then basically I had to get out. It was getting too emotional for me so I went on home. I was there by myself."

But the sign he sought came early the next morning.

Prior to meeting with Frederick and Chancellor Hemenway, Williams received a call at home from an old North Carolina friend. "Thirty minutes before I was leaving to meet with Dr. Frederick that morning, the phone rings and it's a former high school player of mine I coached 24 years before," recalled Williams. "I probably hadn't talked to him in several years."

"I just wanted you to know I was watching the news last night and I saw the deal when you got off the airplane in Kansas City and the look on your face," said the former player. "In high school you always told us that the players were the most important thing in the world to you. I was talking to another former player last night and we agreed that everybody would feel the same way: that you were the most important thing to us, not where you coached. Of course, we want you to come to North Carolina, but if you decide to stay at Kansas it's not going to change our feelings toward you whatsoever because we want what's best for you."

"I think that was the final straw," Williams said later. "I hadn't spoken to that young man in several years. That sort of told me it was all right to not go to North Carolina."

After the call, Williams drove to the office early Friday morning and asked the coaching staff to meet him downstairs in the coaches' locker room, a place he had always used as a sanctuary when the phones were ringing too much upstairs. That was most definitely the case today. When the staff arrived, Williams asked each and every one of them to write down on paper what would be best for them: Williams staying at Kansas or going to North Carolina. He also asked them to write down what they wanted Williams to do. When the staff left to complete their assignment, Williams went upstairs to meet with Bob Frederick.

Williams did not give Frederick a definitive answer. The two spoke about Williams's trip to Chapel Hill and how tough a decision it was going to be. Then it was time to go speak to Dr. Hemenway. When Williams and Frederick walked outside to Frederick's car, they were besieged by hundreds of media. "I had asked the media to give me a week, yet they couldn't allow that to happen because I guess they were afraid somebody was going to get a scoop they wouldn't have. So every time we'd walk out it would just be a sprint with people with cameras. I remember as were walking to Bob Frederick's car to go up to the chancellor's office and I looked at one guy and said, 'You're going to have a heart attack.' He was lugging around this huge camera and it's 95 degrees."

The conversation with the Chancellor went much the same as the one with Frederick. Never was a new contract brought up. "If I decide to come back I want to come back for the same contract I have now," Williams told the Chancellor and Dr. Frederick. "I don't want it to be any different."

When the meeting was over - and knowing reporters were camped outside -- Frederick went out the front door while Hemenway escorted Williams out the back. He walked through campus alone, but when he got to Allen Field House, he was again besieged by media. "I haven't decided yet," Williams told the throng. And it was true.

Once inside, he called upstairs to ask Haase to bring the staff's notes down. He read them alone in the locker room, believing that maybe in the prior, agonizing, week he had failed to consider some aspect of this situation. But nothing in his staff's words struck him as something he had not already thought about from every angle.

When Haase returned with lunch, Roy Williams had come to a decision.

**

Scott Williams tried to concentrate on work at First Union, but it was difficult. It wasn't the fact it was a Friday afternoon before a summer weekend; it was that his thoughts were with his father a thousand miles away. About 2:30 in the afternoon, his phone rang.

"I know you didn't want me to call you and tell you, but I want to tell you..." said Williams.

"No!" interrupted Scott. "I really don't want to know."

The two talked some more, but in adhering to his son's wishes, Williams did not let on as to what his decision would be. He didn't have to. Scott, at this point, already knew.

During the call, Scott looked up. In the doorway were several co-workers, all anxiously awaiting word so they could sprint to their own phones and email and release the news to their friends.

"Don't tell me," continued Scott. "I don't want to know. Like I said I'll be proud if you stay at Kansas, I'll be pumped if you go to Carolina."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive," replied Scott. "You're going to make the right decision. No matter what you do, you can't lose. You're going to feel as though you let people down, but there's not a bad choice here."

"All right," Williams said, fighting back tears again. "I appreciate it."

Scott hung up the phone. "My boss, Jim, was absolutely irate," said Scott. "To his credit, Jim was great through the whole process; he didn't really bother me that much. He actually came up to me that afternoon and said, 'Scott, I got a bad feeling, he's not coming is he? I think we're going lose Roy.'"

To which Scott honestly replied: "Jim, I don't know. I swear."

**

Bob Frederick was elated. His coach was staying.

Roy Williams had asked Frederick to come downstairs to the coaches' locker room in mid-afternoon and told him the news. "He was emotional," recalled Williams. "I think it was relief and I think it was that he really did want me to stay… I think it was a feeling of satisfaction that I would turn down North Carolina to stay here at Kansas. It was an emotional time for both of us."

Williams and Frederick then discussed how to release the news. Williams wanted to simply release a statement that he was staying.

"Roy, we have over 40 out-of-town media here," explained Frederick. "We can't do that to them. That's just not fair."

Williams agreed. If they were going to have a press conference, Williams wanted to bring his wife and daughter back from South Carolina to be there. That pushed it back to 9:00, central time. After more back-and-forth communication with the sports information staff, it was determined that the only place that was large enough to hold the press conference was in the football media room. Even with that, so many requests came into the SID's office that another release was issued saying that anyone who wanted could watch the press conference on the football stadium's jumbotron.

Williams then told his coaching staff, all of whom were relieved and thrilled at the news. But Williams was far from joyful. In fact, he was as unhappy as he had been at any time during the week-long affair. After he told his inner circle, he departed the building and went home, dreading what came next.

Later, he would have to make two of the hardest phone calls of his life.

**

The news of a press conference in Lawrence momentarily confused the sports world. It was obvious to most that the location of the event signified Williams was staying at Kansas. But the shock of the decision defied analysis by the many who had assumed it was a done deal. Some held out belief that maybe, due to Williams's deep sense of loyalty, he was having a last press conference in Kansas to say goodbye and would then fly to Chapel Hill for another event announcing his hiring at UNC. Many in the world of college basketball simply couldn't fathom that Roy Williams would not come back home to coach the University he loved so deeply, particularly those who lived in the state of North Carolina.

Leaving the press conference organization to the sports information staff, Williams went home and quickly felt the walls closing in on him. To get some air and clear his head, he walked out of his house and across the street to Alvamar Country Club to hit a bucket of range balls.

Two television trucks were stationed outside his house, waiting for him to emerge. The two reporters approached him as he walked down his driveway and asked for interviews. "This is hard," said Williams. "I just want some peace and to go over and hit some balls."

Both left him alone.

**

Dick Baddour left his office about 5:00 eastern time and headed home, setting up in his den with his cell phone next to his home phone, waiting for the call. It came a few minutes before 6:00, the deadline (5:00 central time) Williams had set for his final decision.

"Dick," Williams said immediately, "I can't come."

"Oh, Roy…" said Baddour.

Williams then stammered a bit in explaining his reasoning, but it came down to one simple thing: he couldn't tell his players he was leaving. Loyalty, the one quality that was so important to the Carolina family, was exactly the reason he couldn't leave Kansas. In many ways, it was that simple.

Williams went on to tell Baddour that he, as the athletic director, had done everything right. Williams began thanking Baddour for everything when Baddour's cell phone rang.

It was Dean Smith, asking if there was any news. "Coach, I have him on the other line."

"Coach," explained Baddour, "he's not coming. He's going to call you right now."

Returning to Williams, Baddour asked if there was anything he could do. He asked Williams if he needed more time. "Dick," said Williams, "I've taken too much time. The decision has been made and I wish I made it the first day, but I didn't know it was going to go in this direction." The call ended with Baddour telling Williams he would always remain a member of the Carolina family and Williams, again, thanking Baddour for his time and patience.

Then Williams made the call that would haunt him. Smith was "shocked", according to Williams, and disappointed. As hurt as Smith felt, however, it paled in comparison to how Williams felt. "I felt like I was dirty," said Williams. "I felt like I was being disloyal to him."

Williams was truly traumatized by the conversation - and he still had to address the media later that night.

Sixteen thousand people showed up at Memorial Stadium and cheered wildly when Williams uttered the two words that would grace the front page of all four major newspapers in the state of Kansas the next day:

"I'm staying."

**

It was just after 10:00 pm in the east and Scott Williams was growing tired. He had been in the office all night, not wanting to go home to the messages and calls he kenw awaited him there. Since 8:00 he had checked the news every few minutes - switching between spreadsheets and an internet browser on his office computer - to see if the official word had come. A few minutes after 10:00, he saw it: no more than a few paragraphs. Pops was staying at Kansas.

Scott smiled as he read the story. His father had stayed true to himself and, once again, taught the son an important lesson.

In the process of staying loyal to those players he had made a promise to in their living rooms through the last 12 years, Williams gave up more than almost anyone would. As one of his good friends told him later, when some of the Carolina faithful cursed his name: "How can anybody be disappointed in you? You gave up more than anybody."

Williams gave up the chance to coach at his alma mater, to take over the reigns of college basketball's premier program, a program no one loved more than he did. But he did it for a great reason; the love of people close to him and the respect for the concepts of loyalty and keeping a promise. In this day and age of college basketball coaches and players choosing a me-first attitude and taking the money and running again and again, Roy Williams stuck to what he learned first from his high school coach, Buddy Baldwin, and then from Dean Smith.

Loyalty.

But even more important, he taught his son what it meant to stay true to yourself. As the most lasting lessons always seem to be, it was difficult to teach.

"As a father, you don't want to disappoint your kids," Williams said almost a year after he made the decision to stay at Kansas. "Scott loves North Carolina basketball just like I do. (Telling) Coach Smith, that was hard. Coach Guthridge… Eddie (Fogler)… But nothing's ever been as hard as worrying and being concerned about hurting Scott. Not doing what he wanted me to do. And my wife. She wanted to go back. She wanted to be closer to her children. That was my dream. We would have been able to go back closer to our children.

"Nobody gave up what I did."