{"id":173,"date":"2017-03-10T14:43:07","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T19:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=173"},"modified":"2023-08-04T09:30:33","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T13:30:33","slug":"return-of-the-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/return-of-the-king\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of the King"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a point guard for the University of North Carolina from 1987 to 1991, King Rice led his team to two ACC titles and a Final Four. Last December, he returned to the school for only the second time as a head coach. We followed Rice throughout game day as he reunited with old friends and prepared his Hawks to take on the Tar Heels, who at the time were ranked 9th in the country.<\/p>\n

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\u00bb Rise and shine: \nRice heads to the team breakfast and first meeting of the day. \n<\/div><\/div>
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\u00bb Family matters: \nThe coach departs for the Dean Smith Center with his wife, Summer, and their youngest son, Julian. Older son Alexander, a sophomore guard for prep school powerhouse St. Anthony\u2019s High School, missed the trip because his team had games. \n<\/div><\/div>
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\u00bb Meet with a president\u2014or two: \nThe coach has a laugh with President Emeritus Samuel Magill (below, at left), a 1950 UNC grad, and President Paul Brown. <\/div><\/div>
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\u00bb Keeping things loose: Rice and Julian squeeze in some one-on-one during the Hawks\u2019 morning shootaround. <\/div><\/div>
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<\/div><\/div>
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\u00bb Working lunch: The team watches game film of North Carolina to do some last-minute scouting. <\/div><\/div>
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\u00bbFinal prep: \n\u201cPlay hard, play smart, play together, have fun,\u201d is the team motto. <\/div><\/div>
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\u00bb Friendly competition: \u201cHe\u2019s top notch as a man, as a coach, and as a mentor,\u201d says Rice about Tar Heels Head Coach Roy Williams, who as an assistant to Dean Smith helped recruit Rice to UNC. <\/div><\/div>
\"\"
\u00bbGame face: \nThe Hawks take an early lead and keep it close into the second half before UNC runs away with it late. Final score: 102-74.<\/div><\/div>
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\u00bbGame face: The Hawks take an early lead and keep it close into the second half before UNC runs away with it late. Final score: 102-74.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
\u00bbGame face: The Hawks take an early lead and keep it close into the second half before UNC runs away with it late. Final score: 102-74.<\/div><\/div>
\"\"
\u00bbKing\u2019s court: \n\u201cI\u2019m the luckiest guy that, in 1987, Coach Smith gave me a scholarship and it\u2019s made me have a great, great, great life,\u201d says Rice, who played 140 games for the Tar Heels. <\/div><\/div>
\"\"
\u00bbDebrief: \u201cWe didn\u2019t have our best night tonight. North Carolina is awesome,\u201d Rice says at the post-game press conference.<\/div><\/div><\/div>

 <\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hawks basketball coach King Rice leads his team back to his alma mater. A Day in pictures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":95,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":50,\"y\":100}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[94,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics","category-play"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Athletics, Play","issue":"Spring 2017","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}