WaPo reported it at the time as he was passed over for Ernie Nestor
MASON OPTS FOR NESTOR
By David Aldridge
May 12, 1988
George Mason University will name Ernie Nestor, an assistant at the University of California, as its men's basketball coach today.
George Mason has scheduled a news conference this afternoon to introduce him as the replacement for Rick Barnes, who left April 22 for Providence College after one season.
Nestor, 41, has twice served as an assistant for Lou Campanelli, now the coach at California. He sandwiched those stints (three years at James Madison, three at California) around six years at Wake Forest (1980-1985), where he was Carl Tacy's top assistant. Before Lefty Driesell took the head coaching position at James Madison, Nestor had been mentioned as a possible candidate there.
Nestor, a 1968 graduate of Alderson-Broaddus College in West Virginia, won out over the others: Jack Bruen, head coach at Catholic University, and Joe Gallagher, an assistant at Boston College. All three had interviews with George Mason Athletic Director Jack Kvantz last week.
Other candidates who didn't make the final cut included Perry Clark, an assistant at Georgia Tech, and North Carolina assistant Roy Williams.
Here's how Williams tells it himself
The UNC head coach took questions from the media before the Tar Heels take on Georgia Tech on Saturday.
247sports.com
I remember turning down George Mason. The AD was coming down to meet with me and sign the contract and then I was going to go back. I called him at 6 a.m. and said don’t come. And then I called Coach Smith at 10 because knew he wasn’t going to be up at six and told him that I had some good news or bad news, depending on how you looked at it. He said, what’s that? And I said, Coach, I called and told them I wasn’t coming because it didn’t feel like it was the right thing. And I’ll never forget it, he said, everything’s going to be fine, l love the way you’re patient. Everything is going to work out one of these days. A job is going to open up that has your name written all over it and be staring you right in the face. That was May and that July I was named the head coach at Kansas.
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