Ding dong, Kevin Willard is gone.
Good riddance, Maryland fans cried Sunday after 10 days of feeling captive to their (former) basketball coach’s leverage play.
What Willard initially pitched as his public crusade to elevate Maryland’s men’s program quickly morphed into a more cynical episode as it became clear he probably would decamp to Villanova.
What was the use of publicly cataloging Maryland’s failings if he knew he was out the door? Now that we know the ending to the story, Willard’s news conferences during his team’s NCAA Tournament run amount to the basketball version of cruel breakup letters.
Maryland will move on from being publicly dumped. A very good replacement — whether that’s a seasoned winner such as Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams or an up-and-comer (think the next version of Michigan’s Dusty May) — will gladly sign up to coach in the Big Ten and recruit from the rich Baltimore-Washington talent pool. That coach will be backed by a new athletic director, perhaps with a fresh vision. The Terps will have a winning roster again, even if that’s a mighty hill to climb in time for next season.
But the issues Willard brought screaming to light will not vanish with him.
The natural impulse for Maryland fans and officials will be to forget the departed coach as quickly as possible and decide they’re better off without him.
“We are working with urgency and thoroughness to find the next leader of our program, and we are confident that we will find a coach who will continue to build and grow the legacy of success of Maryland Basketball,” University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines said in a statement Sunday confirming a national search for Willard’s replacement has begun.
But moving on without assessing what went wrong would be a wasted opportunity.
Instead, it’s worth trying to figure out why Willard left and how Maryland might reshape its athletic department to prevent being spurned by its next coach.
People around the program, from administrators to top boosters, thought Willard was happy heading into the NCAA Tournament. Why wouldn’t he be, coming to the end of his finest season in College Park with his starting backcourt likely to return for 2025-26, a new practice facility opening and leverage to negotiate a lucrative contract extension?
Just as it was reported that Willard was zeroing in on a deal to stay at Maryland, rumors began to swirl that SMU was wooing athletic director Damon Evans.
It’s difficult to overstate how detrimental the timing of that news proved to be. Suddenly, Willard didn’t know who would be his boss. Though he maintained close contact with executive associate athletic director Brian Ullmann, it was no longer clear who sat across the table from him in contract negotiations.
That led directly to Willard’s now-infamous news conference the day before the Terps’ opening-round game against Grand Canyon, at which he spilled the beans on Evans’ impending departure and complained about funding for his program.
The situation had officially escalated into a crisis.
Pines did not step in immediately to mediate. Boosters expressed confidence that Willard would stay. But with every public statement, the coach seemed to offer less assurance. Meanwhile, Villanova lurked, watching other candidates linked to its opening take other jobs. It was as strong a signal as any that the smaller university to the north thought it had a great chance to poach Willard.
By the time Willard coached the Terps in the Sweet 16, die-hard fans who traveled to San Francisco booed his exit from the team hotel. His leaving was a fait accompli.
But why Villanova over Maryland?
We’ll no doubt hear romantic narratives over the next few days about how Willard’s heart never left the Big East, about his respect for the Wildcats’ tradition, built by the late Rollie Massimino and taken to the next level by Jay Wright.
That stuff has its place, but Maryland has its own rich tradition, plays in a larger, wealthier conference and by all accounts made an offer competitive with Villanova’s.
Both Maryland and Villanova provide a base from which a coach can compete for at-large tournament bids every year, with greater success possible in peak seasons. They’re different programs but roughly on the same level in college basketball’s pecking order.
So, why?
The best guess is a combination of money and comfort.
Willard coached at Iona and Seton Hall, northeastern schools where men’s basketball was king. What is Villanova? A northeastern school where men’s basketball is king, with more funding and a more decorated history than his previous employers.
In a world about to be ruled by revenue sharing, Willard knows he won’t have to fight with a football coach for his piece of the pie. That was never going to be true at Maryland, even if plenty of Terps fans would prefer that more resources go to basketball than to a football program doomed to second-class citizenship in the Big Ten.
With Evans departing, Villanova calling and a chance to choose what will probably be the last major job of his career, Willard opted for what must have felt like the safer long-term bet.
Where does that leave Maryland?
Well, the timing is awful. If university administrators had known Willard was leaving two weeks ago, they could have made a strong play for former UMBC coach Ryan Odom, who ended up at Virginia. Another appealing candidate, George Mason’s Tony Skinn, would not yet have signed an extension.
The Terps are starting late, searching for a coach when the transfer portal has already been open for a week. That’s bad news because most of Maryland’s 2025-26 starting lineup will probably have to come from the portal. The team’s best player, Derik Queen, is almost certainly NBA-bound. Julian Reese and Selton Miguel’s college careers are over. Guards Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Rodney Rice could go right back in the portal, possibly with designs on following Willard to Philadelphia.
Given those pressures, Maryland will have to hire its next coach quickly (like, this week) to have a realistic chance at assembling a March Madness contender for next season.
That said, people who know the program don’t see the need for a massive overhaul.
The deal Maryland offered Willard would appeal to plenty of excellent coaches, one of whom will take the job. Given the urgency of the search, Evans’ replacement probably won’t be chosen until after Willard’s, but that hire is just as important.
The new athletic director will have to be a deft referee as Willard’s successor competes with football coach Mike Locksley and women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese for money to compensate players.
Pines has signaled that he will take a central role in the coaching search after he stepped up to offer Willard what he called “a significant contract extension and salary increase, new staff, and one of the highest revenue-share budgets in the B1G Conference.”
That’s a good thing, not only because Pines is a smart, well-liked figure but because his statement indicates the university is taking this crossroads seriously.
Perhaps the setup for Maryland basketball is mostly fine, and the chief takeaway is simply that university administrators can’t be complacent about their coach’s contentment given the financial and competitive complexities of modern college basketball.
Maryland’s basketball and football coaches are among the state’s most-visible, best-paid public employees. We can argue that managing their needs and egos should not be a flagship university’s top priority. The money involved says otherwise.
Have a news tip? Contact Childs Walker at daviwalker@baltsun.com, 410-332-6893 and x.com/ChildsWalker.