Last Year’s “Late Night With Roy Williams” had to be the one of the worst in Kansas University basketball history.

“It was awful,” Williams, KU’s 15th-year men’s coach, said Tuesday.

The coach’s negative critique had nothing to do with the acting or dancing abilities of KU’s men’s and women’s players, who will be performing again Friday night at Allen Fieldhouse.

It had everything to do with the fact nobody on the lower level could hear what the emcee and players were saying.

A portable sound system brought in for the event completely flopped, making Williams flip after a midnight scrimmage when he told the media, “We’ve got to figure out a way for it to be heard or maybe 14 Late Nights is enough.”

As Late Night With Roy No. 15 nears, improvements to the sound system  costing in the neighborhood of $50,000  are in place in the form of speakers visible underneath the center scoreboard.

Will the speakers work?

Will the sound be distributed better?

“Friday night you’ll find out and so will I,” Williams said with a hearty laugh.

Nobody was laughing after last year’s Late Night  KU’s marquee men’s basketball recruiting event of the school year.

“At the University of Kansas there is not another weekend that is a big-time, big-time weekend. Successful pageantry, excitement, enthusiasm  that is what we have at Late Night,” Williams said.

“Last year (after Late Night) I sent a letter to chancellor (Robert) Hemenway and (athletic director) Dr. (Al) Bohl. I said, ‘I’ll give you the money to do a study, see if we can improve the sound system.’ Since that time we’ve spent several thousand dollars and they’re putting it up right now as we speak.”

Two companies  Coffeen Fricke and Associates, Inc., of Lenexa and Dodge Electronics of Topeka  did the brainstorming and ensuing work that might result in better acoustics on Friday night.

“What they did,” said KU facilities director Brad Nachtigal, “was repositioned the sound so it was better distributed upstairs and added speakers down through the center of the scoreboard for the floor bleacher seating area so the sound is distributed equally down there, too.”

The work  paid for by Margin of Excellence basketball funding  is “a temporary, one-year fix of an enhancements, upgrades and modifications (project),” Nachtigal said.

“We didn’t want to do a full-blown sound system for two reasons: one, we don’t know what kind of videoboard we will get and what timetable, and two, we did not want to spend all that money on something we might not incorporate in that (videoboard project).”

Williams Fund officials are working on securing donor funding for a state of the art videoboard.

“We are trying to find some money  we do need a new scoreboard and we need a videoboard because everywhere we go they have a videoboard. I mean we go to North Dakota and they have a videoboard. It’s fantastic before the game and it really does add something,” Williams said.

“I do not think you have to be like everybody else. I never said we have to do this because somebody else does it, but when our players stand there at North Dakota and watch introductions on that videoboard and it was impressive  I don’t want somebody else to have something we don’t have that is impressive.

“We couldn’t find the funding. It costs a lot of money and we don’t have the money. We’ll try to get the sound system (working) now and hopefully get a new scoreboard, videoboard (in immediate future).”

Of course, Late Night still can be a hit in recruiting  KU will be bringing in 6-foot-9 prospect Josh Boone of Mt. Airy, Md., on Friday  without a videoboard.

It can’t be a hit without a working sound system.

“Late Night is our biggest night of the year recruiting,” Williams stressed, aware of the fact several underclassmen usually make unofficial visits. Oklahoma City junior power forward Darnell Jackson, for instance, will be here Friday, plus others. “We’re going to get football going where there are (more) big recruiting weekends. We don’t have that now. Late Night  if they come in here and see the people, see the folks in Allen Fieldhouse, the way they support us, that helps us.”

Doors will open for Late Night at 6 p.m. Friday. Skits will begin about 10 p.m. with a men’s scrimmage at midnight.