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“Basketball coaches are the last of the old cowboys.” I
do have another little saying; it’s under my laptop on my desk:
WBM: Does being here at Wrightsville Beach help you with
the postseason funk?
RW: This year, I probably had the postseason funk longer than
I ever had. It’s because I thought we were good enough to win
the whole thing, yet we were so banged up, it hurt at the end of
the year. It was such a sad thing that those kids — that I thought
could’ve got to the Final Four — could’ve won the national cham-pionship.
If you do that, you’ve got something that no one could
ever take away. You have something that brings you closer to that
group of kids, closer to that university and closer to that time
period, and then it never happens to you. The ’57 team at North
Carolina, those guys walk out onto the court and the crowd goes
crazy, and nobody in the crowd was even alive when they played. It
is something that they have forever that no one can take away and
I wanted this year’s team to have that and so this postseason funk
was tough this year.
On the golf course I can escape, because it’s the one place
that I can compete, and so again, it’s just me against you, and
you and the golf course, which is the toughest competitor.
Here at Wrightsville Beach, I’ve been here two days and I’ve only
made one recruiting call in two days. And it’s a place where I can
almost veg out. I’ve sat in the rocking chair on the porch and sat
down on the beach. I’ve walked the neighborhood three times in
two days, almost four times. I sleep better at the beach than any-where
else because it’s a place where I feel like it’s OK to relax
a second.
WBM: In your autobiography you talk about taking a 30- to
45-minute pregame nap. That you also never napped at home
when your kids were little because you wanted to spend every
minute you were home with them, but now, do you nap at
home? And have you found Wrightsville to be a good place to
nap, and relax?
RW: Constantly, now it might be five to 10 minutes at a time but
I can. … Wrightsville Beach is the kind of place too, that I enjoy
walking up and down the street. I enjoy doing the Loop … and it
is funny that Chapel Hill, and Lawrence, Kansas, are the two places
in the world that I can enjoy walking downtown, because I love
college campuses. But Wrightsville Beach is a place that I enjoy
walking a lot. I enjoy walking the Loop; I enjoy walking the beach.
It’s just that I can let my guard down a little. It doesn’t bother me
when people come up and say hello or ask for an autograph or a
picture. Even though this is my down time, because they say, “We
apologize, I’m sorry we’re doing it.” I say, “You’re fine,” because
deep down inside, the real problem would be if they saw you walk
in and they left and went out the back door of the restaurant.
That’d be the real problem.
January 2012 at the smith center. Jeffrey A. Camarati/UNC Athletic communications
WBM: Do you get away with being incognito here?
RW: At Kohl’s ice cream the other night it was pretty hectic try-ing
to get out of there, taking pictures and things like that. Jerry’s
restaurant is a place I love, fantastic food. I would leave but I end
up taking five or six pictures, and people getting up from their
tables and waiters and waitresses are getting mad because everyone
is in their way, but no, it’s not bad. It really isn’t. When I go to a
high school game, it is a frenzy sometimes.
WBM: You characterized your life as hard work. The title of
your autobiography is “Hard Work;” your team chants that
as they leave the huddle. You still say you outwork everyone
around you. Do you see yourself slowing down or is it pedal to
the metal, forever?
RW: I hope so. I think one of the things is, people want to know,
you get to be 61 and they want to know how much longer you’re
going to go. I always say six to10 years or as long as my body lets
me. If I’m healthy there’s no telling how long I would coach …
I don’t enjoy parts of it — stress, other people’s expectations
that are totally unrealistic, or other people’s expectations that are
unfair, you know, you get tired of that at times — but I enjoy the
practicing every day. I enjoy my association with the kids. I enjoy
the excitement before games. … An hour right before the game
is the slowest time in the world. You’re in the locker room; you
talk to your kids; you’ve done everything you can do, and that’s
the slowest time. That’s the most difficult time. When the game is
over, you have a 30-second time period where it really feels good,
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