Within hours of the Golden State Warriors recognizing President Trump's withdrawal of a White House visit for Steph Curry, and subsequently his 2017 NBA finals champion teammates, it was announced that the 2017 NCAA national championship men's basketball team would not be making the trip to the nation's capital either.
While the team's official reasoning for bypassing an opportunity to meet the President is a logistical one, eyebrows have been raised seeing how Tar Heels head coach Roy Williams has projected disfavor for the President's ways publicly. Williams is recalled saying "You know, our president tweets out more bulls**t than anybody I’ve ever seen," after an ACC tournament game in March. And when the Tar Heels' title run was down to the Final Four and he faced questions on whether or not he was committed to making the White House visit, many feel coach deflected from giving a direct answer.
“We won in ’05; we never got invited. I don’t know if we’re going to get invited this time. That’s a bad way to put it. They invited us in September 2005 when they were doing a lot of teams ... All my team were already at the NBA training camp and two of them in Europe. So we didn’t go in ’05. And we did go in ’09. But, you know, the office of the presidency of the United States is the most fantastic place you can be. But let me think on it,” he said at the time.
On Saturday, September 23, team spokesperson Steve Kirschner finally gave a definitive answer to the question. The players wanted to go, he said, but they just couldn't work it out. “We couldn’t find a date that worked for both parties. We tried about eight or nine dates and between they couldn’t work out that date, we couldn’t work out that date, so – we would have liked to have gone, but not going,” said Kirschner.
Source: charlotteobserver.com
