Villanova should hire Kevin Willard from Maryland as the next head coach, sources said in Fox Sports early Sunday morning.
Willard leaves College Park after having made 65-38 in the last three seasons with two NCAA tournament trips and taking the Terraaps At the first Sweet 16 of the program since 2016. Maryland fell into Florida n ° 1, 87-71, Thursday.
Before arriving in Maryland in 2022, Willard spent 12 years in the Big East in Seton Hall, where he charged the pirates with five NCAA tournaments in six seasons before leaving for College Park.
Now Willard will go to the main line to try to recreate what a former rival, Jay Wright, rolled in Villanova before Kyle Neptune took over in 2022.
Willard, which has northeast roots, had disconnected from the Maryland sports department in recent weeks. The 49-year-old head coach recently expressed his frustrations with the Maryland increases, and after the sports director Damon Evans left to take the same job at SMU last week, the terraaps sports department was left in a state of chaos that the interval Ad Colleen Sorem took over.
Willard’s relationship with Sorem had embellished in recent months, according to sources, especially during an exchange in December where Sorem did not allow the team to stay in New York for an additional night during the holiday season.
“Losing the sports director was a little difficult to be honest,” said Willard in a radio interview on the “Kevin Sheehan Show” on Wednesday. “I did not expect Damon to leave for SMU. But I worked with Brian Ullman, deputy sports director of Maryland) and everyone in the department, and they were great.
“I don’t want monumental things. I just want this program to be the best possible,” added Willard. “I don’t ask for much. I don’t want someone to tell me that we will do it – I want it in my contract. I don’t want people to make decisions about my program that are not involved in my program. These are big for me. I live, breathe, every day. This goal expects to wait for it, but this place was not treated for a long time. My goal is to achieve it.”
Maryland had prepared a financial plan to make Willard one of the 10 best -paid coaches in America, sources at Fox Sports said. But this decision was a family decision to be near his previous original state of New Jersey and to be the king in a school for which he gained great respect in his Big East Days – Villanova.
John Fanta is a national basketball and writer for Fox Sports. It covers sport in a variety of capabilities, from the call for games to FS1 to serve it as a main host on the digital network of Big East to the supply of comments on the field of the 68 media Network. Follow him to @John_fanta.
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