Kevin Willard back in Big East as former Seton Hall coach leaves Maryland for Villanova

Kevin Willard is expected to leave Maryland for Villanova, bringing former Seton Hall coach back to Big East. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Kevin Willard is on his way back to the Big East.

The embattled Maryland head coach, who spent 12 seasons at Seton Hall before taking over in College Park three years ago, has accepted the head coaching vacancy at Villanova. Jeff Ermann of InsideMDSports was first to report the news shortly after midnight Sunday morning. CBS Sports college basketball insider Jon Rothstein also reported that Willard is expected to hold a team meeting Sunday morning to inform his Maryland players of his departure.

The move comes just three days after the Terrapins’ season came to a close at the hands of Florida in the West regional semifinals, just the second time Maryland had reached the Sweet 16 since winning its lone national championship in 2002. In three years as Mark Turgeon’s successor, Willard posted a 65-39 record, guiding the Terps to the NCAA Tournament twice in that span.

Willard became an inadvertent source of controversy during Maryland’s run through March, with his candor surrounding the program’s resources, as well as the apparent departure of outgoing athletic director Damon Evans, making headlines. The coach addressed the situation again Thursday after the loss to Florida, but reiterated he had—at that point—neither accepted nor declined an offer from Villanova.

“I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ll just be honest with you,” Willard said Thursday. “I haven’t talked to my agent, I haven’t talked to my wife. I made a promise to this team that I was just going to focus on this team, and that’s all I’ve done. So I haven’t talked to anybody. I have an agent, I’m sure he’s talking to people—because that’s what agents like to do—but I don’t know. Right now, my biggest concerns in life right now, I don’t know who my boss is going to be, and I don’t know who we’re going to hire.”

“In today’s day and age, that worries me a little bit. I’m just being honest. So this is going to be a family decision. I love College Park, I love Maryland, but when you’re at this point in your career and you’re looking at things, I have to take everything into consideration moving forward. But I have not even talked to anybody, so I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea. I understand fans are going to be pissed because I’m in limbo and this and that. I get it. I’m kind of pissed, to be honest with you, because I didn’t expect to be in this situation.”

Willard’s comments were eerily similar to those he made in his exodus from Seton Hall in 2022, when he coached the Pirates in an NCAA Tournament loss to TCU amid rumors that he was leaving for Maryland. In his postgame press conference that night, he seemingly foreshadowed Seton Hall’s eventual hire of Shaheen Holloway—his former assistant who was in the midst of an Elite 8 run at Saint Peter’s—by saying it “would be the happiest thing to happen to me.” Willard struck a lighter tone when wrapping up his recently concluded season, but offered no further foresight on his own future.

“I really enjoyed coaching this basketball team,” he said. “From the time they stepped on campus in June, they’ve just been so much fun to coach. It was just a whole lot of fun.”

Villanova opens its postseason on Tuesday in Las Vegas, when it takes on Colorado in the opening round of the inaugural College Basketball Crown. The Wildcats will be led by interim coach Mike Nardi, who was promoted following the firing of Kyle Neptune on March 15 after three seasons at the helm.