Roy Williams thrilled Jacque Vaughn is returning to Kansas as assistant coach
Former Kansas coach/Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Roy Williams made the 45-minute drive from his west Lawrence residence to a Kansas City hospital well before sunrise on a mid-September morning, 1996.
His star KU point guard, senior Jacque Vaughn, had been injured in a preseason pickup game. He was scheduled to undergo 6 a.m. surgery to repair torn ligaments in his right wrist.
Williams made it to Vaughn’s bedside in time to wish him well.
“As I was talking to Jacque,” Williams, KU basketball’s coach from 1989 to 2003 related to The Star on Tuesday in a phone interview, “a nurse came in and said, ‘Coach I need you to help me.’ She says, ‘We’ve got a problem.’
“I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ She said, ‘Jacque’s teammates are out there.’ I said, ‘Well, how many?’ And I thought she would say one or two and she said the entire team. The entire team got up, left Lawrence at 5 o’clock to get over to Kansas City to be there before Jacque went into surgery.”
That, Williams added, “says it all right there.” Williams was still touched after all these years by the comfort and encouragement Vaughn’s teammates showed KU’s floor general at a difficult time.
Immensely popular with his teammates and coaches — Williams on Tuesday referred to Vaughn as “darn near perfect and so competitive” — Vaughn a week ago accepted an offer to continue his coaching career as an assistant coach at his alma mater, KU.
Williams believes it was a home run hire by Kansas coach Bill Self, who is about to begin season No. 23 in Lawrence.
“The game is different. The last three or four years, college basketball has changed so dramatically,” Williams told The Star. “But Jacque is one of the most complete players I ever coached. He’s one of the toughest players I ever coached.
“He’s one of the guys who knows how to talk to people, how to get people to work. He touches every box. The thing that always got me about Jacque is how intelligent he was as a player along with how tough he was, and so he’s going to be successful.”
Williams, 74, continued, speaking on the 50-year-old Vaughn, a native of Pasadena, California.
“It’s Kansas … a great, great place, and he had a great experience there,” Williams said. “And you know, the college game is going to be a shock to him, how much it’s changed. But, you know, Jacque has got everything.”
Williams has stayed in contact with Vaughn since the two-time all-Big Eight selection’s graduation. Williams has followed his prize pupil’s fortunes, including when Vaughn was NBA head coach in Brooklyn (2022-24) and Orlando (2012-15).
“I saw him coach his first game as a head coach in the NBA,” Williams said. “Surprised him and went to Orlando and saw his first game down there. I’ve been to Brooklyn to watch him coach. Been to Charlotte (making the trip from Chapel Hill, where Williams coached North Carolina’s Tar Heels 18 seasons after leaving KU).
“It’s been a long time since ’97,” Williams added with a laugh, “but the fact of the matter is that he’s only gotten better as a coach, because he’s had more experience. I remember when he was playing in San Antonio with Gregg Popovich (Spurs coach), and then they kept (Vaughn) as an assistant coach. He’s just one of those unique individuals that’s always going to be successful because, as I said earlier, he touches every single box. He’s just phenomenal in every single way you can possibly be. I love the guy from the bottom of my heart.
“And let me tell you, one way I describe it, when somebody mentions Jacque’s name to me, it makes me smile. That’s a pretty daggum good legacy right there.”
Williams believes having a coach with strong NBA ties can be extremely valuable at the college level.
“I had that with Hubert Davis for nine years because Hubert played 12 years in the NBA himself,” Williams said of his former Carolina assistant coach, now head coach at UNC.
“The college game is different, the rules are different, but yes, the experience that Jacque had as a college player, as a professional player, as a professional head coach, as a professional assistant coach ... Bill’s going to benefit from that. The University of Kansas is going to benefit, and Bill’s done such a great job that Jacque will even be a better coach after each year,” Williams stated.
Williams said Vaughn, who had his jersey No. 11 hung in the rafters of Allen Fieldhouse on Dec. 21, 2002, is excited about his new job. He’s expected to begin working his new job at KU early next week as the first week of Self’s basketball camp begins.
“I talked to him a couple days after (he accepted job), when I got into a place where you can use a phone,” said Williams, who was vacationing with his wife Wanda at Yellowstone National Park the day Vaughn’s hiring was announced. “There wasn’t much of that (phone service at the park and at Mount Rushmore, where Williams also played the role of tourist last week). But yes, Jacque is excited. And I think it’s a very genuine excitement that he has.”
Williams acknowledges it’s special for him to have players he coached at KU still involved with KU basketball.
“You know I’m old school, and you know, I’m just boring as crap,” he said. “I do have great feelings about that place you know. And having Wayne Simien there and having Greg Gurley there and having Jeremy Case there. ... He (Case) signed with us but then I left and didn’t get to coach him. When I see him I see the big smile on his face, and I have the same kind of feeling,” he added of KU assistant coach Jeremy Case.
At KU, Vaughn will likely spend a lot of time working with incoming freshman phenom point guard Darryn Peterson, who is expected to, like Vaughn, start from day one at KU. Vaughn is the the first-ever former NBA head coach to join the KU coaching staff.
“I’m truly honored and overwhelmed with excitement to return to my alma mater and join coach Self’s staff as an assistant coach,” Vaughn, the 1997 Academic All-American of the Year, said on the day of his hiring. ”The game of basketball has provided me the incredible privilege to mentor, coach and compete alongside some of the best in the game. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bring those experiences back to the school that means so much to me. It’s a blessing to once again be part of the Jayhawk tradition.”
Vaughn was asked by Fox Sports about his relationship with former KU coach Williams back in November of 2012, after Williams attended Vaughn’s first game as Orlando Magic coach shortly after Williams had kidney surgery.
“I think it just speaks volumes to the type of person he is,” Vaughn said. “Coach Williams always took time to put himself into my life and see what was concerning me. That takes a great deal of unselfishness. When you’re dealing with all the players he’s coached over the years, it’s even more glaring, his unselfishness. It’s just who he is.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Roy Williams thrilled Jacque Vaughn is returning to Kansas as assistant coach."
