MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
We here in Maryland are used to people leaving us in the middle of the night, and Kevin Willard became the latest, though hardly the greatest, having met with Villanova on Saturday and officially informing the University of Maryland around midnight that he was leaving as the head basketball coach, ending a standoff that had been long in the making, yet came to the forefront through a fortnight of silliness.
“We took a very proactive and aggressive approach to retain Coach Willard, offering a significant contract extension and salary increase, new staff, and one of the highest revenue-share budgets in the B1G Conference,” Maryland said in a statement about Willard’s departure. “We had long and thoughtful conversations about the program and shared the same vision for Maryland Basketball. In the end, he made the choice that he felt was best for him and his family. On behalf of all of Terrapin Nation, we thank Coach Willard and his family for their service and wish them well.”
The timing of Willard’s departure puts Maryland in a remarkably dicy position, as there is no permanent athletic director and a basketball roster that is likely going to have to be completely restocked.
Maryland apparently is now ready to commit significant resources – from revenue sharing to coaching salaries – to find the right person to lead the program, so they had better start fast and swing big on its next hire.
Or does Willard’s seemingly spiteful timing of this force Maryland, which has already missed out on a chance at Ryan Odom and former assistant Tony Skinn, into a position of having to wait a year to swing big, both with the permanent hire and the new roster? Doubtful, but if they don’t strike fast, it’s a possibility.
Former head coach Jay Wright hand-picked Willard for Villanova and Willard apparently loves him some Jay Wright. So, essentially, Jay had Kevin at hello.
It’s not Villanova’s fault, or even Kevin Wiilard’s fault. It’s just the way it is. Ask West Virginia, ask North Texas, or ask Maryland who took Gary Williams from Ohio State, Mark Turgeon from Texas A&M, Randy Edsall from Connecticut, Kevin Willard from Seton Hall, and then ask the school Maryland is about to hit on for its next men’s basketball coach.
It’s just the way of the world. Doesn’t mean we have to like it.
And it’s not even that Kevin Willard left. He originally said he wanted the best for Maryland, voicing legitimate, long-standing concerns about lack of funding for basketball, and he is not the first Maryland coach to voice such complaints going back a very long way.
Once athletic director Damon Evans left, though, Willard was gone, even though he was instrumental in Evans leaving before he could talk to Maryland one more time.
Maryland then told Willard he was right and they would provide everything he needed, yet no response from Willard.
Willard said Friday night following the Terps’ Sweet 16 loss to Florida that he truly didn’t know what he was going to do, using his famous “I have an agent” speech, which is what he said word-for-word three years ago after his final game as the Seton Hall coach. Word for word – it’s all over social media.
From Willard the past two weeks, it’s all been coachspeak to try and save face and salvage public perception. But he failed, having created a way to make his predecessor, who literally quit on the team around Thanksgiving, a sympathetic figure (which, in fact, he actually was).
No, his leaving isn’t the issue. He’s taken exactly one team to a Sweet 16 and he just used that team as leverage. Clearly, there’s no loyalty in college sports anymore. It’s every man for himself and the team is irrelevant.
His not-so-subtle woe-is-me pressers the past two weeks that stole the spotlight from his team is an issue.
As Maryland’s most prominent booster, Barry Gossett, who has donated $50 million to his alma mater’s athletic department, told CBS Sports, “He played us like a drum.”
It’s a horrible end to a great season for Maryland basketball and could leave the program in the biggest mess it’s been in in a very long time.
Maryland is without an athletic director and a coach a week into the transfer portal window with a roster in need of mass reinforcements, as with freshman phenom Derik Queen likely headed to the NBA, the two remaining starters, guards Ja’Kobi Gillespie and Rodney Rice, could enter the transfer portal, leaving the Terps without a single high-level player.
It ends with the coach blasting the school’s basketball funding and selfishly speaking out of school to end the AD’s 10-year tenure by revealing he was leaving for SMU. Then he pretended not to know if Villanova was pursuing him after he had made the deal with Villanova early last week.
From his very first year at Maryland, Willard missed the Big East after 12 seasons at Seton Hall – no football and the emphasis on college basketball above all else. Clearly, he wasn’t happy in a football-centric conference, which is what the Big Ten is, particularly with the brutal travel schedule all Big Ten schools now face with the expansion to the West Coast.
Evans, who played football for Georgia, has always known how important men’s basketball is to Maryland and its fanbase, but he also believed football success was critical to its long-term standing, despite admitting privately to at least one prominent booster that he knew Maryland would never again win a national championship in football, though could win another one in basketball.
Yet it is football that creates 80 to 90 percent of the television revenue.
A lot of good still could, and should, come out of this for Maryland basketball and for the guy who succeeds Willard. Yet only if Maryland remains honest and realistic with itself and gives basketball a better chance to succeed.
Kevin Willard wasn’t right, but he wasn’t wrong either.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT