New Orleans ? Roy Williams has won 418 basketball games and nine conference titles and has guided the Jayhawks to four Final Fours in 15 seasons at Kansas.

Critics are quick to point out that he never has won a national championship.

Williams, who led KU to the NCAA title game in 1991, will have a second chance at winning it all when the Jayhawks face Syracuse and coach Jim Boeheim in the finals tonight at Superdome.

“You know, that part is neat because I think Jimmy has even taken those bad sayings or criticisms longer than I have,” Williams said of Boeheim. “I think both of us feel good about the relationships that we have with our players and what we’ve done.

“I don’t think that he lays awake at night worrying about that. I don’t think either of us is going to jump off the tallest building Monday night if we don’t win.”

Boeheim has been chasing that elusive championship nearly twice as long as Williams. Syracuse is 652-226 in 27 years under Boeheim, whose 74.2 winning percentage is second only to Williams’ 80.7 mark among active coaches.

Syracuse reached the title game in 1987 and 1996. The 1987 squad was denied the title when Indiana’s Keith Smart hit a game-winning basket in the final seconds of a 74-73 victory. Kentucky defeated Syracuse, 76-67, in the 1996 final.

“After you’ve gotten (to the Final Four), you realize it really only matters if you win,” Boeheim said. “Even though it’s a tremendous accomplishment to get here … you still have to win to go home with your team going home happy and your fans going home happy. You know, that’s tremendously important. I think the problem I have is when all of the sudden you’re a good player, good coach because you win or don’t. I mean, that’s just absolute foolishness.”

Williams agreed that a coach shouldn’t be judged simply by the number of titles he wins.

“Norm Stewart won 700 games, never made it to the Final Four,” he said of the Missouri coaching legend. “Louie Carnesecca never won a championship. I can go on and on.”

Williams knows how difficult it is to win it all. His mentor, North Carolina’s Dean Smith, guided the Tar Heels to six Final Fours before winning his first title in his seventh try in 1982.

Smith finished his distinguished career with 11 Final Fours and two titles, winning the second by beating Williams’ KU squad in the 1993 semifinals and Michigan in the title game.

“You know, I saw the criticism he took,” said Williams, who was an aide to Smith from 1978 to 1988. “It hurt me as an assistant more than I thought it did him. I think he understood the big picture of the kids having respect for him, what he was trying to do, how much he cared for them after they left the program. Plus, it was life. You know, you have to be able to handle disappointments.”

Williams has had his share. After losing to Carolina in 1993, KU didn’t make it back to the Final Four until last season.

“That stretch from ’93 to 2002 was a long nine years,” he said. “I can tell you that.”

While Williams’ teams have come up short in three previous Final Fours, the coach’s biggest disappointment happened in the 1997 Sweet 16.

Kansas went 29-5 in 1996 and reached the Elite Eight before being denied a Final Four trip by Syracuse. The Jayhawks returned a veteran squad the following year and went 34-2 with a lineup that included Jerod Haase and future NBA players Raef LaFrentz, Paul Pierce, Jacque Vaughn and Scot Pollard.

Haase played most of the season with an injured wrist that became progressively worse. He was unable to play significant minutes in an 85-82 loss to eventual champion Arizona.

“That one hurt for a long time,” Williams said. “It still hurts. … When it didn’t happen, it just killed me because I knew I would hopefully have other opportunities, but I knew Jacque and Jerod would not have those opportunities again.”

Williams said he thought a team with six graduating seniors, including Academic All-Americans Vaughn and Haase, deserved to win. He spent much of the following offseason evaluating his own performance.

“That summer of thinking about it made me understand that all you can do is the absolute best you can,” Williams said. “Sometimes it’s not going to work out, whether you think it’s right or not — especially the NCAA Tournament, because it’s a crapshoot.”

Boeheim and Williams both said they were more interested in watching their players celebrate tonight than padding their own resumes.

“It’s not going to be the end of the world for me if it doesn’t happen,” Boeheim said. “I’ll feel bad, but I’ll feel worse for the players. In the locker room after the game, in ’87 and ’96, our players, rightfully so, were devastated. When you come that close, it’s 15 people that you feel are your children. When something happens to your children, you will feel a lot worse than if the same thing happens to you. That’s the way I would feel in this situation.”

Meanwhile, players in both locker rooms want to deliver for their coaches and end the criticism that has dogged them for years.

“I really want this for coach Williams,” KU sophomore Michael Lee said. “He’s been here for so long, and he’s done so much for college basketball and Kansas tradition. It would mean a lot for him.”