Hitting The Ground Running

Back in the early days of his career, when he was just getting started as part of Rick Pitino’s staff with the Boston Celtics, Kevin Willard would head home, flip on his TV, and indulge in whatever college basketball happened to be on.

There weren’t quite so many games on television in those days, and, usually, at least one top program was playing if a contest was nationally televised. And since it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Willard got a steady diet of Maryland basketball.

Those Gary Williams-led teams were star-studded, with a who’s who of names now on banners fluttering above the Xfinity Center court. Steve Francis. Juan Dixon. Lonny Baxter. Steve Blake. 

They left an impression on a young coach who was ultimately going places.

“I just loved how they played and I loved how Gary’s teams played,” Willard said. “I had so much respect because they had that swag, they had that flash, but they were so disciplined on defense, they were so unselfish on offense. I was such a big fan of Maryland basketball because that was what I saw and I said ‘That’s what I want to do. That’s cool as [heck].’” 

So he got after it. He worked with Pitino at Louisville for six seasons, got his first head coaching gig at Iona at age 33, parlayed a turnaround at the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference school into a 12-year run at Seton Hall, turning what was at the time another fix-me-upper into one of the Big East’s most consistent programs.

Two decades after being dazzled when Maryland really had it rolling, Willard now has a new job: Getting the Terps back to that level, particularly to the final two weekends of the season.

Now 46, Willard had a good thing going at Seton Hall. He just thinks things could be even better in College Park.

“It was two big factors, time and opportunity,” Willard said. “I think this job is a top-10 job in college basketball. The fact that I was familiar with this area, recruited this area, I didn’t want to go somewhere I couldn’t be successful. 

“I just thought it was an opportunity where I could go someplace where I could be really successful, and the timing was I have two boys, ninth grade and 10th grade. I wasn’t going to move them after this year. If I was going to move them, it was going to be this year. When the timing came up and the opportunity came up, it was too good to pass up.”

Maryland, then, is the destination job for Willard, just as it was for another coach with New Jersey ties 33 years ago. Back then, Gary Williams was 44 and had a good job of his own. The Garden State native and Maryland alum came home, never left, and claimed a national championship trophy along the way.

His run set the standard for the Terrapins’ men’s basketball program. It also created a more concrete sense of what could be accomplished by the right coach and the right set of players.

“He’s had other offers and he’s turned them down,” Williams said. “But when he looks at this place and sees what’s here, I think you want to get to a place where there’s no ceiling on the possibilities. … Just the idea, whether Lefty won it or I won it, it’s been done. I went to Ohio State, and the same thing --- [John] Havlicek and those guys won it. You can say ‘Oh boy, I hope we win,’ but once you do it, it changes things.”

Tuesday marked the first time Willard walked through XFINITY Center’s front door. But it wasn’t his first time in the building.

He didn’t spend as much time looking around on Dec. 22, 2018. He brought Seton Hall in for a late-afternoon tip, entered through the loading dock, walked to the visitors’ locker room, toggled between there and the court, made a detour to the media room for a postgame press conference, and left with a 78-74 victory.

That --- along with the Pirates’ 52-48 defeat of Maryland the next season in Newark to complete the home-and-home --- probably made an impression on Terps fans. They definitely remained lodged in Willard’s mind.

“What I remember was a very, very passionate fanbase,” Willard said. “It was there early, it got loud and then they were pissed when they lost. I like that. You go to some jobs, and they don’t get there early, they don’t get loud and when you lose they shake your hand and they’re all happy for you. I love the passion about the fanbase.”

The best way for those feelings to be reciprocated will be to win. Willard’s done that at Seton Hall, taking over a program with only three NCAA tournament appearances in the 16 seasons prior to his arrival. He took the Pirates to five of the last six NCAA tournaments and had a team on track to land a No. 3 or No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament in 2020 before the Covid-19 pandemic halted the season.

Willard stresses how much Pitino’s emphasis on player development remains a major influence in his approach to coaching, and it was vital in helping to turn around Seton Hall. The Pirates had a senior earn at least a share of the Big East player of the year in two of the last three seasons: Myles Powell in 2020, and Sandro Mamukelashvili in 2021.

“Usually, the teams reflect the coach,” Williams said. “They grind it and they’re scrappy, and I think he had really good players. You recruit the guys you can get if you’re a good recruiter, because you can waste a lot of time on guys you can’t get. He got the guys he could get and they played a certain way, and I think in the back of his mind here, he’s going to be able to go after anybody and it’ll be fun watching him play. Knowing him, they will never show up not ready to play.”

That aligns with Willard’s belief --- instilled by his father Ralph, a former high school coach who worked for Pitino and also led programs at Western Kentucky, Pittsburgh, and Holy Cross --- that a cornerstone to any success is maintaining a good attitude and putting in work each day.

It also means adapting how to play to what is available at a given time.

“Some of the things I had to adjust to at Seton Hall and Iona was making sure I gave my personnel the best opportunity to win games,” Willard said. “I’m always adjusting. I’m not going to stick with one style. I think you need to adjust to give yourselves the best chance to win games. Villanova has the slowest tempo in Division I basketball, but I have yet to find an upset Villanova fan. Or Virginia. If you’re winning games, that’s what people care about. I will adjust our tempo and what we do defensively with what we have on our roster.”

At Iona, Willard inherited a team that had gone 2-28 the season before he arrived. Three years later, the Gaels won 20 games.

When he arrived at Seton Hall, the Pirates’ program was virtually toxic, with a coaching change occurring in part because of frequent off-court issues.

While Maryland struggled to a 15-17 record this past season, its recent foundation as a program is stronger --- and its ceiling higher --- than at Willard’s two previous stops.

“We’re looking at this as hitting the ground running and trying to get going a lot quicker than when you’re trying to put out fire after fire after fire and you have setback after setback,” Willard said.

Yet there was long-term value in figuring things out, as Williams knows all too well.

“You start out at a place like Iona and everything’s not in place and you have to work real hard,” Williams said. “Same thing at Seton Hall. If you look at Seton Hall’s assets compared to the other Big East schools, it’s probably in the bottom half. You have to work to get into that top half, and I like that. I started out as a JV high school coach, so I see a lot of similarities to that. The great thing about doing that is you learn everything.”

It means learning about program infrastructure, something Maryland is improving with a basketball-only facility it is expected to break ground on early next year. It means fine-tuning recruiting. It means figuring out the ins and outs of any institution.

And it means scheduling, something Willard has long been hailed for doing aggressively. While there are years he might be more ambitious than others, he acknowledged he is already looking at potential home-and-home series for his first season at Maryland.

There is much, in fact, he is looking forward to as he and his family settle in after a dozen years at Seton Hall. And he knows from watching the Terps from a couple of decades ago just what can be done under the right circumstances in his new gig.

“This is a phenomenal university,” Willard said. “It’s proven that you can win a national championship here. Our women’s program is phenomenal, so it’s being done. Our job is to make sure it’s [done] on a consistent basis.”