Kevin Willard leaves Seton Hall to fill vacancy at Maryland

Kevin Willard, who guided Seton Hall to five NCAA Tournaments in 12 years, has left South Orange to take over at University of Maryland. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

Seton Hall will undergo a change in leadership for the first time since 2010, as it was announced Monday that head coach Kevin Willard resigned his position to fill the same role at the University of Maryland.

Willard, who led the Pirates to five NCAA Tournaments in his tenure, also skippered Seton Hall to a Big East tournament championship in 2016 — the program’s first since 1993 — and a share of the regular season crown in 2019-20. His 225 wins trail only Honey Russell for the most in Seton Hall history.

“Seton Hall will always be a special place for my family and me,” Willard said in a release issued Monday by the university. “For 12 years, this was home, and I’m proud of everything that we accomplished. We were able to build not only a great program, but we were also able to build a second family with my players, staff, and the entire university community. Together, we made Seton Hall men’s basketball a program we can all be proud to support.”

Willard initially struggled his first few seasons after replacing Bobby Gonzalez in 2010, with his sole postseason appearance in his first five seasons coming in the 2012 NIT. His fortunes changed in 2014, when he and his staff secured a recruiting class headlined by Isaiah Whitehead, Angel Delgado, Khadeen Carrington and Desi Rodriguez, along with Ismael Sanogo and Michael Nzei. After a rocky freshman season, the sextet led Seton Hall on an unforgettable stretch run that culminated with a thrilling victory over Villanova in the Big East tournament championship game. Whitehead, who galvanized the Pirates through the final weeks of the season, received the Dave Gavitt Award as the tournament’s most outstanding player before going on to receive the Haggerty Award as the most valuable player in the New York metropolitan area, as voted on by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers’ Association.

Willard won only one NCAA Tournament game in his tenure at Seton Hall, a first-round victory over North Carolina State in 2018, but stabilized the program upon the reformation of the Big East and maintained its status among the conference’s upper echelon. In total, five of his former players have gone on to play in the NBA: Fuquan Edwin, Isaiah Whitehead, Angel Delgado, Sandro Mamukelashvili, and Myles Powell. All but Edwin also captured the Haggerty Award during their time at Seton Hall.

Seton Hall will launch an immediate search to find a successor to Willard, but the Pirates will likely not have to look very far. It is widely expected that Shaheen Holloway, Willard’s longtime assistant before taking the reins at Saint Peter’s in 2018, will return to his alma mater upon the conclusion of the Peacocks’ season. Saint Peter’s will face Purdue on Friday in the East Regional semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, the first time the program has reached the Sweet 16.

Willard, in what turned out to be his final press conference as Seton Hall head coach Friday following the Pirates’ NCAA Tournament loss to TCU, endorsed Holloway for the job in a cryptic, yet prophetic foreshadowing of his fate.

“If I’m not here next year, I’d love if Shaheen Holloway is here,” Willard said. “That would be the happiest thing to happen to me.”

Willard received a seven-year contract at Maryland, where interim head coach Danny Manning replaced Mark Turgeon in December. Per Adam Zagoria, who covers Seton Hall for NJ Advance Media, the deal is worth $29.4 million with an average annual value of $4.2 million, a significant pay raise from Willard’s salary at Seton Hall.