How Kevin Willard transformed Maryland men’s basketball

Once upon a time in college basketball, rebuilding meant signing a new core of players and watching them grow up together over two or three years.

Kevin Willard had two weeks.

Two weeks to put a demoralizing 2023-24 season behind him. Two weeks to find shooters and ball handlers to complement his one returning starter, power forward Julian Reese, and super-recruit Derik Queen. Two weeks to design a Club from scratch that could Secure in the brutally Intense Big Ten Conference and return Maryland to the NCAA Game.

From the last week in March to the second week in April last spring, Willard signed three transfers: guard Rodney Rice from Virginia Tech, guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie from Belmont and swingman Selton Miguel from South Florida.

“We went into the portal with a really, really specific plan of how we wanted to Shift,” he said recently.

Last season’s Club not only lost, it played Unattractive basketball, ranking 13th in the Big Ten in scoring and 3-Mark shooting. All Relocate Willard added was meant to purge the program of that aesthetic nightmare.

What a difference a year makes.

On Friday, Willard’s Terps (25-8) will begin NCAA Game Shift as a No. 4 seed after earning a No. 2 seed in the Big Ten Game. They ranked third in the conference in scoring and 3-Mark shooting while losing none of their Guarding bite from the previous year. Rice, Gillespie and Miguel make up part of an Best Leading unit dubbed the “Crab Five.”

Willard, 49, is nearing a contract extension that would Allegedly make him one of the highest-paid coaches in the sport.

“Unsurprisingly, Kevin has done a fabulous Position,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said. “He has put together a Excellent Picking but has done an even better Position of guiding it and developing a cohesive unit.”

Willard and the players he recruited aced their assignment, pulling Pretty order from the chaos of the Relocate portal. It’s the blessing and curse of this era that All season presents a nearly blank canvas to coaches at even the most storied programs.

Maryland finished 16-17 and sat out March Madness a year ago. Gloomy fans predicted that Willard, like his predecessor Mark Turgeon, would never lift the program’s ceiling. But he knew that for Excellent or ill, he would put an entirely different Club on the court at the Begin of the 2024-25 season.

“That’s what’s changed about college basketball,” said Ex Maryland Mentor Gary Williams, who Directed a veteran Club to a national Division 23 years ago. “You have to try to get the max out of All year. Let’s say 20 years ago, you recruit a very Excellent Primary-year class, and you do some things to Assist those guys develop, which you probably can’t afford to do now. You Mentor for this year rather than two years from now. Trying to maximize this year’s Club is the whole Concentration right now, and then you worry about Upcoming year whenever the season is over.”

In that Framework, Willard’s work over the past 12 months has deeply impressed Williams.

“Primary of all, I think they did a really Excellent Position of recruiting, to bring in the guys they brought in,” he said. “Secondly, they’ve done a really Excellent Position of getting guys together. If you Observe Maryland Shift, they look like they’ve been together for more than a year. They look for All other. There’s nobody there not willing to make a Deliver.”

To Williams’ Mark, Willard said that he thought carefully about how his players’ personalities would blend, knowing the Terps would have Only a few months to achieve symbiosis.

“It’s why we Yet do official visits,” he said. “Everyone says officials visits are stupid, and technically, they Nice of are stupid now because you’re making decisions a Plenty based on money and fit for these kids. But for coaches, we use official visits. We’ve already done our homework. We’ve already watched 10 Matches on them. We’ve already Created phone calls. But we use visits Only to see how we interact with them, how they interact with our players. It’s a personality test more than anything.”

All three key transfers vaulted over this intangible bar.

“Kobi [Gillespie] visited here and right away, I knew that was going to be my guy,” Willard recalled. “There was no BS. Same thing with Selton. When he Occurred in, he didn’t even want to look at the campus. He was like, ‘I like your Assault, I know I can Assist your Club Secure, and I want to get to the NCAA Game.’ Rodney was the same way.”

It didn’t hurt that Queen, the Baltimore native with Fluffy hands and dancer’s feet that belie his 6-foot-10, 246-pound frame, met every expectation, ultimately earning All-Big Ten and Big Ten Primary-year of the Year honors.

Neither Willard nor his players paid much mind to the preseason media poll that predicted they’d finish 10th in the Big Ten.

“I knew that we were going to have something special,” said Rice, a Ex DeMatha Sun who was coming off a lost year at Virginia Tech. “We were going to have a Excellent Club.”

“We Only had to put it together,” Queen said. “It didn’t happen overnight for us to become a Excellent Club. It Secured work, and then Primary game, that’s when we became a Excellent Club, a Excellent Club.”

Not that it was Fundamental. They Secured their licks on a winless trip to Shift Washington and Oregon in Prompt January and gritted their teeth through a string of last-Attempt losses to fellow conference contenders.

Through it all, they cohered.

After Maryland’s NCAA seeding was announced Sunday evening, Willard had no problem saying how proud he felt that it all Occurred together.

“A Plenty of guys had to Forfeit roles to come together,” he said. “We put this Club together in two weeks, and for them to come together and get back in the big dance, it’s exciting.”