And you thought Roy Williams ran off to North Carolina, leaving his Jayhawk faithful behind in a blaze of baby blue.

“Not so,” Williams says, raising an eyebrow and crossing his arms. “I’ve been right here in Lawrence the entire time.”

If you’re not confused already, consider this: “Basketball is all right,” Williams says, “but I’ve never really gotten that into it. I’d rather go camping.”

Coach, you’d rather be out roughing it in a tent than stomping along the sidelines in Allen Fieldhouse?

“Yeah, I guess that will sound pretty crazy when people read it,” Williams says. “But hey, that’s just me.”

Meet Roy Williams, a lifelong Lawrence resident, current Kansas University employee and affable co-owner of a famous name.

“My parents just wanted to name me after my great-grandfather,” Williams, 29, says. “They never saw 1989 coming.”

That was “THE year,” as Williams’ mother, Orlena Carr, likes to put it, that another Roy Williams rode into town. The former KU men’s basketball coach quickly put Carr’s 14-year-old son in the spotlight.

“It was pretty funny from the start,” Williams says. “People would stop me in the halls at school and say things like, ‘What happened with the game last night, Roy?’ or ‘Man, the team isn’t looking so good, coach.'”

The comments seemed especially strange to Williams, a ninth-grader at Lawrence High School at the time, because it was just one year earlier that he had watched a basketball game from start to finish for the first time.

“The 1988 championship game was the first game I ever watched the whole way through,” says Williams, who dabbled in soccer and participated in Boy Scouts as a kid. “So, I had some catching up to do.

“But you know, the more I watched the team after Roy Williams arrived, the better they seemed to play.”

Could two Roys be better than one?

Roy Williams, of Lawrence, has lived here his entire life and experienced the joys and pitfalls of sharing a name with the former Kansas University men's basketball coach.

“Actually, when I graduated from high school in 1993, there were six Roy Williamses in town,” Williams says, laughing. “We really should have started a support group or something.”

Williams, Roy Williams

He has a point: Life as Roy Williams in Lawrence isn’t without its challenges.

“There have been some strange moments,” says Williams, who began working as a food service supervisor at KU’s Wescoe Terrace last year. “The hardest thing is getting people to believe me.”

Williams says he’ll never forget a particularly awkward experience that resulted from a phone reservation he made at a Lawrence restaurant during the height of Roy’s reign.

“I remember calling to make reservations and them asking for my name,” Williams says. “I said, ‘Williams,’ and the lady said, ‘First name?’ What was I to do? I said ‘Roy,’ and her tone changed completely. ‘Oh, certainly, sir,’ she practically gushed. ‘We’re so thrilled to have you.’

“Of course, when I arrived at the restaurant, she was not too happy. They had pulled out all the stops, I think, but we ended getting shoved to a lousy table.”

Carr was with her son that evening and says she vaguely remembers wondering to herself if it was too late to start calling her son by his middle name.

“Things were just a little too weird right then,” Carr says, chuckling.

The slightly built and youthful-looking Williams also recalls an awkward moment that happened on his 21st birthday.

“I went to go buy alcohol for the first time,” Williams says, “and the guy cracked up at my I.D. He wanted to know what kind of idiot would choose Roy Williams for his fake I.D. in Lawrence. I just shook my head and laughed. I couldn’t win.”

The joy of being Roy

Of course, Williams says there have been some enjoyable moments associated with his name as well.

“I actually ran into Roy Williams once at a Lawrence High football game, and I was gutsy enough to introduce myself,” Williams says. “I was like, ‘Hi, you’re Roy Williams, right?’ and he was like, ‘Yeah!’ So I said, ‘Well, I’m Roy Williams, too.’ He laughed and said, ‘No kidding? Well, do me a favor and don’t get into any trouble.’

“That was great.”

Williams also has accumulated a spate of nicknames since 1989, the most common being “Coach.”

“People at one of the places I used to work started that,” Williams says, “and it just stuck. I even have a hat that says ‘Coach’ in big letters.”

Williams, whose slick black hair likens him more to NBA coach Pat Riley than a certain Tarheel figurehead, says he’s had a good time with his name despite the roller-coaster ride that was Roy.

“You know, how many people get to experience this?” Williams says. “It’s been fun, even last spring when Roy was pretty hated around here. It kept things interesting.”

And should another Bill Self unwittingly move to Lawrence, Williams offers a piece of friendly advice: “An unlisted phone number probably isn’t a bad idea, I’ll say that much.”