Four months after being told he could no longer coach at North Carolina, which will rely on players like point guard Raymond Felton to return to the NCAA Tournament next season, Matt Doherty found himself working at a summer camp, coaching ... Raymond Felton.

"It wasn't weird at all," Doherty says. "It was great. It was fun -- fun to be on the floor again in a coaching setting."

It was the first week of July, and Doherty was attending the adidas ABCD Camp at Teaneck, N.J., to work alongside NBA assistant coaches as they put camp counselors like Felton through a variety of informal drills. The adidas camp, like the Nike camp in Indianapolis, draws the best high school players in the country, and because of that, it attracts college and NBA coaches galore. While he was there, Doherty caught up with several members of the Dean Smith family tree, including then-Milwaukee Bucks coach George Karl and even Roy Williams.

	The Doherty File
	A look at Matt Doherty's career highlights as a head coach: North Carolina
	2002-03	19-16 (6-10, ACC)
	2001-02	8-20 (4-12, ACC)
	2000-01	26-7 (13-3, ACC)
	TOTALS	53-43 (23-25, ACC)
	*2002 Preseason NIT champion *2001 AP coach of year *2001 NCAA Sweet 16
	Notre Dame
	1999-2000	22-15 (8-8, B. East)
	*2000 NIT second place

Yes, the same Roy Williams who replaced Doherty in Chapel Hill.

"Visiting with Coach Williams, eating lunch with George Karl, that was good for me to do that," Doherty says. "It was good to get back into the basketball side of things and not hide."

Hide?

Doherty has done anything but hide since being asked to resign April 1 after three seasons at his alma mater, where the administration sided with several players who said the demanding Doherty had become too difficult to play for. At the time it was safe to wonder how damaging the episode would be to Doherty's reputation, but soon the UNC situation had been overshadowed by the coaching debacles at Iowa State and Alabama, where Larry Eustachy's drinking and Mike Price's partying cost them their jobs.

Within a month of his resignation, Doherty already had spoken with more than one Division I athletics director about a coaching vacancy. In the end, Doherty said he decided not to pursue any of the handful of coaching jobs that had become available.

"I decided to look forward to next year, see what it brings," Doherty said. "It's really been very relaxing, fun, nice to not have the stress hanging over your head. But I also realize I don't want to live the rest of my life this way. I'd like to have something that really fires me up and I have a passion for."

That would be basketball.

Doherty came to that realization in the late 1980s after spending his first few years after playing college basketball working on Wall Street as a bond salesman. To get back into basketball he took a job on old friend Bob McKillop's staff at Davidson, then joined Williams' staff at Kansas, then became Notre Dame's coach for a year before North Carolina hired him in 2000.

He says losing what he had called his dream job didn't kill his passion for basketball.

"It's like getting burned by a girlfriend. It hurts, and there's certainly some pain there, but it's not the end of the world," Doherty said. "I wasn't the first coach, and I won't be the last coach that is asked to resign from his position. It's almost like a badge of honor these days."

So is going into television, which is what Doherty hopes to do for the 2003-04 season. He has spoken to executives from a number of networks, including ESPN, and his agent is in the process of trying to line up Doherty a schedule of roughly 20 games as a color analyst for the upcoming college season.

That's one way for Doherty to stay in the game he loves, but he says he has three options.

	“	I wasn't the first coach, and I won't be the last coach that is asked to resign from his position. It's almost like a badge of honor these days. ”
		— Matt Doherty

"One is college coaching, being a head coach again," he says. "Two is doing TV, and three is working as an assistant in the NBA. I'll see where this TV thing goes, and then make decisions from there."

In the meantime, the time off has done wonders for Doherty's golf game. He broke 80 for the first time earlier this summer, carding a 77 that had him joking about illegal club faces.

"Somebody better check my driver," he says.

Doherty also has spent more time with his wife, Kelly, and two small children, Hattie and Tucker, than he had in years. Along the way he has learned just how hard it has been for Kelly to run the household without much help from the busy college basketball coach.

"You realize how hard it is to be a housewife," Doherty says. "Especially when you move. The last three, four moves we'd had, I really didn't participate. I was working. But to actually help move, cancel your phone, cable, turn off the heating and air, and have it started up again -- this time I got to help, and I realize how tough it is, especially with two children. I now have even more respect for Kelly than I did before."

He respects the man in the mirror, too. April was hard, he says, but May was better, and June better still. He spent some of June in Italy at a coaching clinic held by the Italian club team Benetton Treviso, then moved from Chapel Hill to the Charlotte area in July. He's rested, happy, and capable of breaking 80 on the golf course. Life could be better, of course, but it's not all that bad right now for Matt Doherty.

"The reputation thing, that's not for me to decide," Doherty says. "I get up every day and make decisions, and there are perceptions and facts about those decisions. Some of the perceptions are good, some are bad maybe -- I don't know -- but all I know is I can look myself in the mirror at night and feel good."

Gregg Doyel covers college basketball for The Charlotte Observer and is a regular contributor for ESPN.com. He can be reached at gdoyel@charlotteobserver.com.