Villanova hires Maryland’s Kevin Willard as its next coach

After a two-week search for Kyle Neptune's successor, Willard is Villanova new men's basketball coach.

Published March 30, 2025, 2:15 a.m. ET

In the final days of Villanova’s coaching search, all roads seemed to lead to Kevin Willard.

On Sunday morning, Villanova made it official, announcing Willard as its next men’s basketball coach, ending a two-week journey that began when Villanova fired Kyle Neptune on March 15 and featured an awkward drama near its end.

What followed Neptune’s firing was two weeks of Villanova mostly keeping a tight lid on the situation while Willard engaged in a rather public negotiation and departure from the University of Maryland. It devolved into what will be an ugly exit from the school that hired him away from Seton Hall in 2022.

Willard led Maryland to this year’s Sweet 16, where the Terrapins fell to top-seeded Florida, 87-71, in the West Regional in San Francisco on Thursday. But in the lead-up to both weekends of tournament basketball, Willard was faced with questions about his future leading Maryland’s basketball program.

It started on Selection Sunday, the day after Neptune’s firing, when CBS Sports reported that Willard was presented with terms of a contract extension from Maryland. But Willard later said publicly that there were “fundamental changes” that needed to be made at the school, and spoke about the difficulty of negotiating when Maryland had an outgoing athletic director, Damon Evans, who is off to Southern Methodist. Willard seemed to couch every answer about his intentions of remaining at the school while rumblings of mutual interest between he and Villanova persisted. He even used the wording “as of now” to describe his intention of staying at Maryland during a radio interview Tuesday morning, two days before the Sweet 16 game.

Then, on Wednesday, Willard answered two questions about his future during his media availability by instead talking about Thursday’s opponent, Florida.

All of it led to obvious speculation and easy-to-make conclusions that Willard was on his way out, and Villanova had its next coach. Maryland fans seemed resigned to Willard’s fate, or at least annoyed by his handling of his job status. During a send-off event at the team hotel in San Francisco, some of them booed him.

After the loss Thursday, Willard again expressed concern about Maryland not having an athletic director. “In today’s day and age, that worries me a little bit,” he told reporters. “My honesty got me in trouble, it might as well keep getting me in trouble.”

Willard said, “I have no idea” when asked if Villanova had extended him an offer.

“I love College Park,” he said later. “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.”

Asked if he wished he had approached things differently over the last week, Willard said: “Nope. Not at all.”

It was an awkward situation made more difficult by the NCAA’s calendar. The transfer portal opened earlier this week and the sport’s yearly free agency period is well underway while teams like Willard’s try to compete for a championship and schools like Villanova try to fill coaching vacancies.

Terms of Willard’s deal with Villanova were not disclosed. His contract at Maryland paid him more than $4 million in 2025 and he earned NCAA Tournament incentives totaling more than $100,000. Willard’s buyout, according to a contract reviewed by The Inquirer, is $2 million but drops to $1.5 million on April 1.

“Coach Willard quickly stood out among an impressive pool of candidates during a comprehensive national search,” Villanova president Rev. Peter M. Donohue said in a press release. “Throughout the process, Coach Willard demonstrated that he has the vision and experience to guide Villanova Basketball in the changing world of college athletics. Beyond his notable success on the court, we were also impressed by his ability to articulate how Villanova basketball fits into the overarching mission of the university.”

Taking over at Villanova marks a return to the Big East for Willard, who coached Seton Hall to a 225-161 record from 2010 to 2022, when he left for Maryland. Willard led the Terrapins to the NCAA Tournament in his first season, and after a 16-17 season last year, he took Maryland to the second weekend this season for the program’s first time since 2016. At Seton Hall, Willard led the Pirates to the NCAA Tournament in five of his final seven seasons (a sixth would have happened if the 2020 tournament wasn’t canceled). This March run at Maryland was Willard’s first trip to the tournament’s second weekend.

Willard, who turns 50 in April, is from Long Island and began his head coaching career at Iona in 2007. Before that, he was an assistant for 10 years under Rick Pitino with the Boston Celtics and then the University of Louisville. He played at the University of Pittsburgh under his father, Ralph, a longtime coach.

While Willard’s negotiating with Maryland played out publicly, Villanova’s search was kept mostly under wraps. It was the first major move for new athletic director Eric Roedl, who started in January. Roedl was joined on the search committee by Donohue; associate athletic director Brian Beacham; Randy Foye, a Villanova basketball alum who runs the NIL collective associated with the university; basketball chaplain Rob Hagan; and Villanova trustee Tom Quindlen.

The committee clearly prioritized finding a coach with more head coaching experience than Neptune had when he was hired following Jay Wright’s retirement in 2022 after just one season at Fordham. Also apparent is that Villanova’s status as a destination job hasn’t yet changed despite three consecutive missed NCAA Tournaments, a down year for the Big East, and power conferences seemingly running college sports.

Villanova successfully lured a coach from a Big Ten school, and it’s likely the stature of basketball at ‘Nova is what made the school attractive to Willard, never mind his history in the conference and the region. His new basketball program won’t have to contend with a Big Ten football program when it comes to allocating financial resources in the next phase of revenue sharing in college athletics, and Willard was open about wanting Maryland’s basketball program to get a bigger piece of the pie.

“Villanova basketball has a deep tradition of excellence and a culture that is second to none in college basketball,” Willard said in a statement. “We are thrilled to be a part of it and join the Villanova community.”

Willard’s work with the Wildcats will need to start right away. Villanova’s starting lineup is out of eligibility after this season, and it’s unclear how many remaining players will opt to enter the transfer portal, which already has more than 1,000 players in it. Injured Villanova forward Nnanna Njoku entered the transfer portal earlier this week, and other Wildcats could follow.

The timing of hiring a new coach and the portal opening was always going to be strange when Villanova opted to play in the new College Basketball Crown tournament in Las Vegas, which starts this week. Interim coach Mike Nardi and the rest of the staff have been preparing the team for that event.

Willard, meanwhile, can start focusing on building next season’s roster with Villanova slated to lose 86% of its total scoring from this season.

Willard is the 10th head coach in Villanova history. The program had just four coaches from 1962 to 2022. The post-Wright years have so far been a bit unstable. Willard’s charge will be getting to train back on the tracks and helping Villanova find its footing as the sport and college sports landscape continue to evolve.