ANAHEIM, Calif. – A continent removed from his Tobacco Road roots, Roy Williams can’t shake the ACC.

First, Williams and his Kansas Jayhawks had to cope with Duke in an NCAA West Regional semifinal Thursday. Less than 24 hours after a compelling 69-65 victory, Williams faced the question he thought he’d put to rest three years ago:

Are you going to be North Carolina’s next coach?

“When I made the decision, I expected that was it,” Williams said Friday. “I didn’t expect, and don’t expect, to make that decision again.”

On Saturday night at the Arrowhead Pond, Williams and Kansas (28-7) play Arizona (28-3) for the West Regional championship and a berth in the Final Four. It is a classic matchup of the region’s top two seeds, and a national showcase for two of the game’s most complete players Kansas’ Nick Collison, the son of a high school coach, and Arizona’s Luke Walton, the son of Hall of Fame center Bill Walton.

Collison scored a career-high 33 points and added 19 rebounds, four assists and three blocked shots against Duke. Walton contributed 16 points, eight assists and seven rebounds to Arizona’s 88-71 semifinal victory against Notre Dame.

But amid media reports that North Carolina players and parents aired complaints about Tar Heels coach Matt Doherty to university officials Thursday, Williams found himself talking more about North Carolina than Kansas-Arizona. Williams, you see, is a North Carolina graduate and former Tar Heels assistant coach. And when Bill Guthridge retired three years ago, Williams was the school’s choice to succeed him.

After seven days that he still calls “the worst of my life,” Williams elected to remain at Kansas. Only then did North Carolina approach Doherty, another Tar Heel.

) and then the head coach at Notre Dame.

Much has changed. North Carolina has failed to qualify for the last two NCAA tournaments, ending a record streak of 27 consecutive appearances and prompting rampant criticism of Doherty. Williams, meanwhile, remains a Kansas icon, coaching the Jayhawks to the Final Four last season and to the brink this season.

But one thing has changed at Kansas: Bob Frederick, the athletic director who in 1988 hired an untested assistant coach named Roy Williams to guide one of college basketball’s marquee programs, retired in 2001. Williams, staunchly loyal to Frederick, has no such appreciation for his new boss, Al Bohl, according to Kansas media reports.

“I know you guys think I call back there every day to find out what they’re having for breakfast, but I don’t,” Williams said of Chapel Hill. “I’m pretty focused on what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Williams’ focus on Saturday night is on an Arizona team that rallied from a 20-point first-half deficit to clobber Kansas 91-74 on Jan. 25 in Lawrence, Kan. But after watching his team rout Notre Dame, Wildcats coach Lute Olson said his team is “playing the best we have all year. We’re as ready as we can be, I think.”

Arizona’s guards keyed that victory as Salim Stoudamire scored a career-high 32 points and Jason Gardner added 23. The Wildcats outrebounded the Jayhawks by 10.

“I really don’t think that you’ll see the same type of performance,” Kansas guard Keith Langford said.

“It was a helpless kind of feeling there in the second half,” Williams said. “We’ve done that to other teams but not had it done to us.”

Williams appeared powerless again Friday, this time to stop the North Carolina chatter.

“I’m not interested in talking about North Carolina,” he said. “But I know you are trying to do your job. North Carolina has a coach that I care about greatly, and that’s the way I’m going to leave it.”

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(c) 2003, Daily Press (Newport News, Va.).

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