Tom had this to say about Dean Smith.
Tom Gauntlett (’63-67):
“When I got there in 1963, Coach Smith was just Coach Smith. He wasn’t the Coach Smith everybody talks about today, the well known Coach Smith. He was just finding his way in coaching and it was interesting to watch him evolve as a coach. He was a disciplinarian. He was an Xs and Os man. He was a brilliant coach. That’s all I can say about that end of it. But he wasn’t as well known then but he treated everyone at that time the same as he treated them later in life. Twenty years later he treated his players the same as when we were there with his first couple teams. So, I distinctly remember that. It’s easier to say now, ‘Oh, he was a great coach,” since he’s won all these championships. But when I played, he hadn’t won anything yet. My senior year was the first year we went to the final four. I remember that the most about him and I remember coming out of high school, going from a high school coach to a guy like him, how much he really cared about you. How much he talked to you as a person, not just a basketball player, which everybody has said, but it’s really true what they’re saying about him. I’ve had people question that about him. People who didn’t know him would say, ‘Was he really like that or are they just saying it?’ You know what? He really was like that. Everything that anybody has ever said about him is very true. People don’t understand, he was a year or two away from losing his job there at one time. He just handled it with a lot of grace, a lot of dignity, he never gave up. He never gave up on our team when we weren’t playing that well. He just worked harder and looked what happened in the end."
