Former UNC basketball coach Bill Guthridge dies at 77

He preferred “Bill.”

If you called Bill Guthridge “Coach,” he would give a title right back to you — like “player,” “writer,” “announcer” or whatever role happened to fit.

Tim Peeler, a reporter who worked for The Durham Herald-Sun and the Greensboro News & Record from 1994 to 2004, remembers Guthridge as having a sharp sense of wit.

“He was just an extremely nice guy, very competitive — a droll and dry sense of humor, which I truly appreciated,” he said.

Guthridge died Tuesday at the age of 77. He joined the UNC staff in 1967 and was Dean Smith’s assistant for 30 years before Smith retired in 1997.

Because of Smith’s policy of generally not allowing assistant coaches to talk to reporters, Peeler said he got to know Guthridge in a more personal way than he might have otherwise.

“It was never really a reporter-coach or source relationship,” he said. “It was more like, hey, you talk to each other and get to know each other a little bit because you know you’re not going to use them in a story.”

Guthridge replaced Smith as head coach and led the team to the NCAA Final Four in 1998 and 2000.

But that wasn’t something he ever really planned for.

On the day in 1997 when Smith announced his retirement and Guthridge was tapped as his successor, Guthridge said at a press conference that he never expected to assume that role.

“It has never been my goal to be head coach at the University of North Carolina,” he said. “I’ve always said it wasn’t a goal of mine to be head coach.”

Guthridge was sought by multiple schools as head coach, including Arkansas and Penn State. He almost took the position at Penn State in 1978, but decided to stay.

After that, Guthridge made a habit of refusing head coaching offers.

“He might be the most loyal assistant coach of all time — who got a chance to be head coach for a few years,” Peeler said. “But all he ever wanted to do was help North Carolina basketball be successful.”

John Woodward, the owner of Sutton’s Drug Store, remembers Guthridge coming in to eat lunch at the restaurant. The two also lived in the same neighborhood.

“He loved our cheeseburgers,” he said. “He and I had a real good time always talking about the St. Louis Cardinals because he was a big baseball fan as well as a basketball fan.”

Woodward said Guthridge was kind and easy to approach.

“He was a very easily approachable man to talk to,” he said. “When people recognized him when they’d come in, they would still stop to speak to Coach Guthridge and even ask for him to sign something or if they could take a picture with him or something like that.”

In the last couple of years, while Guthridge’s health was declining and he was using a wheelchair, Woodward said Guthridge would still make it to Sutton’s every three or four weeks to grab a cheeseburger for lunch. Former assistant coach Joe Holladay and former UNC Athletic Director Dick Baddour would take him.

Like Smith, Guthridge was losing some of his memory in the last years of his life.

“Just to see him go downhill like that and have their memories taken away from them because they were both so good at that — at recalling so many things from the years,” Peeler said. “It was hard to watch.”

Mike Waddell, senior associate athletics director of external relations at the University of Illinois, knew Guthridge through attending Carolina Basketball camp during summers as a child. He also worked with Guthridge at his first job out of college with Tar Heel Sports Network.

“He didn’t say a whole lot, but when he did talk, you knew to listen,” Waddell said.

Waddell said Guthridge was gracious and classy.

“In today’s era of college coaches, you have guys who run up and down the court. They scream and yell; they have theatrics,” he said. “That wasn’t Coach Smith, and that wasn’t Coach Guthridge. They were both very classy and just the epitome of loyalty to their players.”

While Smith’s death received heavier coverage than Guthridge’s might, Waddell said Guthridge was just as instrumental in the team’s success for all those years.

“Coach Smith will get all the national stuff,” he said. “But Bill Guthridge as much as anybody is responsible for the building of that program.”

He recalled lessons that Guthridge taught him at summer camp.

“I learned when I was 13 at summer camp not to talk back to people when they make a mistake and to treat them with respect even when they’re in the wrong,” he said. “When I saw that Bill Guthridge had passed, I thought about all these things — they just flooded over me.”

Waddell said people who followed the team in the ’70s and ’80s might feel the loss the hardest.

“To lose Coach Smith in February and now to lose Coach Gut in May? It’s like I’ve lost two grandfathers,” he said.

During Guthridge’s time at UNC, he coached five National Players of the Year, six ACC Players of the Year, five ACC Rookies of the Year and 28 first-team All-ACC players. He was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame in 2013.

He is survived by his wife, Leesie; two sons, Jamie and Stuart; and a daughter, Megan.

One of Guthridge’s comments at the conference when Smith retired in 1997 seems like it’s fitting even now, 18 years later.

“(My goal) was to go out when Dean did, but I wasn’t ready to go out at this time.”

city@dailytarheel.com