UNC Basketball: 12 candidates to succeed Roy Williams as head coach

Jerod Haase

If we circle back towards the Carolina family, we’ll see that there are still several intriguing names out there. Roy Williams didn’t exactly have the largest coaching tree in the world, especially from Carolina assistants, but there’s still a power conference head coach who spent over a decade on his bench that might be a fit for this job.

After spending his freshman year at California, Haase transferred to Kansas to play under Williams and spent most of the next 18 years of his career by his side. Soon after graduating, Haase joined Williams’ staff at Kansas and followed him to North Carolina in 2003. He got his first head coaching shot with UAB and led them to an NCAA Tournament victory as a 14-seed. Stanford hired him in 2016 and he’s spent the last five years attempting to rebuild success with the Cardinal.

The positive about hiring Haase is that he’s a former North Carolina assistant with extensive ties to the program and to Williams, plus he has head coaching experience, which many of the Carolina candidates will lack. Unfortunately, aside from that upset of 3-seed Iowa State, his head coaching career hasn’t exactly been successful, with just a single NIT bid in five seasons at Stanford, a far cry from that program’s former glory. Is it enough to get him a shot to replace Roy?