OK, it’s time to get over the resentment. It’s time to get on with your lives. It’s time to pick up the pieces and move on.

Roy Williams was Kansas University’s men’s basketball coach for 15 years — 15 mostly glorious years — but that was then, and this is now. Only the earth — and television commercials — last forever.

You can forget about any Easter weekend comparisons, too. Williams may have had his last supper with his players Maundy Thursday, and today might be Good Friday, but Williams still will be wearing Carolina blue when they roll back the stone Sunday.

Sorry, if that sounds sacrilegious to you, but Williams was close to being a deity in Kansas and among KU alumni and friends all over the country. Even media-types often referred to him, irreverently but good-naturedly, as God. By that, I mean in the context of, “God is having a press conference today,” or, “Has God ever said the words Al and Bohl in the same sentence?” or, “It looks like God is on a soap box again.”

Williams has always been willing to offer an opinion about pretty much anything, and with little equivocation. You and I might not have agreed with all of his extemporaneous speeches, but you have to respect him for his candor.

At the same time, you have to concede it required a special kind of courage for Williams to return to town Thursday and face the underclass players he had forsaken and hurt deeply, and to confront the thousands of people who had believed him when he announced three summers ago to a throng at Memorial Stadium: “I’m staying.”

In a sense, Williams proved Yogi Berra was right. It wasn’t over when Williams boarded that plane for Chapel Hill, N.C., Monday night. It really wasn’t over until Thursday night, when nearly 2,000 people packed the Lied Center to pay homage to the 2003 NCAA runner-up Jayhawks.

“I will admit it’s difficult,” Williams said during an emotional six-minute talk before the awards presentations. “The easy way out would be not to come, but I would not do that to these players. I came to show them the respect they deserve.”

Williams also talked about his “15 fabulous years” at Kansas and that he hoped that in time “everyone will look at it like that.”

Former Kansas University basketball coach Roy Williams wipes a tear as he walks past a phalanx of former players, including, from left, Brett Ballard, Lewis Harrison and Rex Walters. Williams attended the KU basketball banquet Thursday at the Lied Center.

In time, perhaps they will remember the Williams Era fondly, but in the meantime the words “I’m staying” linger as an albatross over those 15 fabulous years. Perhaps they should hang another banner next to “Beware of the Phog” in Allen Fieldhouse, proclaiming “Beware of Coaches Who Say, ‘I’m Staying.'”

Larry Brown, the man Williams replaced, had uttered the very same words back in the spring of 1988 when he was courted by UCLA and came oh-so-close to bolting for Westwood for the second time.

“I’m staying,” Brown announced to a gathering of media and fans in Allen Fieldhouse on that spring afternoon.

A month later, Brown was gone to the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA.

The next time a Kansas men’s basketball coach has the occasion to announce he’s staying, the reaction should probably be: “That’s great. Will you sign an affidavit to that effect?”

Two times burned, three times learned. How often can you cry wolf to a Kansas University basketball fan?

How much of his KU experience Williams will take with him to his alma mater I don’t know. But I do know he has promised he will wear his KU Final Four ring, once it arrives.

That ring will not be worn, he stressed, to slight Carolina’s program, but to use it as an incentive for his new players to force him have to take it off and replace it with a UNC Final Four ring.

Kansas and North Carolina played for the national championship in 1957 and again in 1991, and don’t you just know the third time would be an absolute charm in 2004.