Anaheim, Calif. ? Talk of UCLA wanting to hire Kansas University men’s basketball coach Roy Williams and rumors of the University of North Carolina making another run at Williams spawned a whole new level of speculation Friday among Jayhawks in Southern California.

And it didn’t involve the point spread for KU’s regional final tonight against Arizona.

“If there are irreconcilable differences between coach and (KU athletic director) Al Bohl — and I don’t have any animosity toward Al Bohl — but if a choice needs to be made, it’s not really much of a choice,” said Dana Anderson, a prominent KU benefactor, friend of Williams and former member of the KU Athletics Corp. board of directors.

“Coach feels like he’s being micromanaged, and if that’s the case we need to eliminate the micromanagement. I don’t want to negotiate or debate it. Let’s just make the change. My judgment is we’ll lose coach Williams if that is not resolved within days of the conclusion of the basketball season.”

KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway, walking through the lobby at the team hotel, addressed the situation Friday by focusing on Williams’ strengths instead of addressing Bohl’s job status.

“Roy Williams is the best basketball coach in America, and KU is extremely proud to have the best basketball coach in America and to have a team in the Elite Eight,” Hemenway said. “Any school would love to have Roy Williams as its coach, but Roy Williams is the coach at Kansas. And that’s it.”

As KU fans continued to hold out hope for extending the season at least another week — with a trip to the Final Four in New Orleans — they found themselves once again grappling with the prospects of their beloved coach leaving Mount Oread.

‘Do … whatever it takes’

UCLA’s job is open after the school fired Steve Lavin earlier this month. Former UCLA coach John Wooden considers Williams’ coaching style, outlook and performance as being the closest to his own, and Williams will be back in Westwood next month to accept the Wooden National Coach of the Year Award.

“If UCLA doesn’t want Roy Williams, they’re crazy,” said Jerry Nossaman, a retired Lawrence dentist who came to Anaheim for the West regionals. “If we let him go, we’re crazy no matter what. But I don’t think we will. I think we will do whatever it takes to keep him.”

Nossaman doesn’t consider Williams to be “money driven,” and therefore other changes might be necessary: upgrades to restrooms and the scoreboard at Allen Fieldhouse, for example.

For his part, Nossaman doesn’t mind all the talk about Williams being pursued by other schools.

“It would bother me a lot more if nobody wanted our coach,” he said.

Reports Friday out of Chapel Hill, N.C., had former KU assistant Matt Doherty’s standing as the Tar Heels’ head coach in jeopardy. Six or seven UNC team members were said to have complained to athletics director Dick Baddour about Doherty’s handling of the team during its second-consecutive season of disappointment.

Speculation about a replacement immediately turned to Williams as the potential No. 1 candidate, should the job become available. And KU fans were taken back in time, to 2000, when Bill Guthridge’s retirement left Williams — a North Carolina graduate, former assistant coach and longtime supporter — as the No. 1 choice to replace him.

‘He’s staying at Kansas’

After a week of intense introspection, Williams back then turned down his admitted “dream job,” citing a loyalty to his players.

Max Falkenstien, who has called KU games on the radio for 57 years, said, “In my mind, he’s already made that decision. He’s staying at Kansas. I don’t think he could look those guys in the eye that he recruited and tell them he was leaving.”

But Anderson — whose family donated $4 million for a new strength and conditioning center for KU athletes, and another $9.45 million for the athletic department — doesn’t want to leave the door open for doubt.

Especially now that the North Carolina issue has surfaced again — “that scares me more than UCLA,” Anderson said — time is of the essence.

“In running my company, if I had a key person and a person who’s not as key and they don’t get along, I would get rid of the one that’s less key,” said Anderson, vice chairman of Macerich Co., based in nearby Santa Monica. Macerich is the country’s fourth-largest owner of mall properties. “That’s the way I run my business. And that’s the way the university should be run. That’s my personal opinion. …

“Let’s get out of his way and let him do his thing.”