NEWARK — Less than a week after losing to Marquette last year in the first round of the Big East Tournament, Seton Hall coach Kevin Willard met with his friend and boss, Seton Hall athletic director Pat Lyons.
Once 13-3 and nationally ranked, the Pirates collapsed in the second half of the season amidst locker room turmoil, winning only three of their final 15 games.
In the boss’s office, Lyons looked at Willard and asked, “Do you think you can get this done?”
“I tell you one thing, we will win next year,” Willard said after a fifth year of failing to get the Pirates to the NCAA Tournament. “There’s not a doubt in my mind that we’re not going to win. I think I got some something special. I think I have a special group. We will win next year.”
Lyons responded, “All right, that’s all I needed to hear.”
“I give Pat Lyons credit, he could’ve gotten rid of me last year,” Willard said. “I told him if you stick with me, I promise we’re going to win.”
Willard left the meeting and went out recruiting, but still had doubts about his future in the weeks ahead. Sources said he was in discussions with Holy Cross about becoming their head coach, a job that ultimately went to Bill Carmody in May.
“I had to take a look at the [Seton Hall] program and say, ‘Can we win?’ Willard said. “Or am I better off going someplace else, the NBA, a different college job, go back to being an assistant.’ There was like a list of things, what’s best for my family.”
After the Lyons meeting, Willard also visited Louisville for a couple of days where he met with his father, Louisville assistant Ralph Willard, and his longtime mentor, Rick Pitino.
Both reassured him that things would turn around at Seton Hall.
“I’m lucky, I got two fathers,” Willard said. “I got my father who’s been coaching for 30-something years and I got Coach Pitino… I got great advice from both of them.”
Willard told Pitino, “I think I have a very special group, I think I can grow them. I really think I can win.”
“That’s the belief you need to have,” Pitino told him. “If you believe then I believe it, and you just gotta go out and do it.”
Pitino also told Willard, “You’re going to have a hard time winning home games [because of the lack of crowds at the Prudential Center].”
Nearly a year after those critical conversations with Lyons, his father and Pitino, it appears inevitable that Willard, 40, will coach in his first NCAA Tournament next month. Seton Hall (21-7, 11-5 Big East) hasn’t been to the Big Dance since Louis Orr was the coach in 2006.
Three days after shellacking Providence by 18 points at home, Seton Hall scored the biggest victory of the Willard Era when it took care of No. 5 Xavier, 90-81, on Sunday afternoon before a sellout crowd of 10,353.
Desi Rodriguez went for a career-best 27 points with 12 rebounds, Isaiah Whitehead added 22 points and Angel Delgado tallied 17 points and 8 rebounds.
That’s one way to beat the 1-3-1 zone!. Hot start for @SetonHallMBB has them up early on #5 Xavier. #DunkinDesi https://t.co/LfrrLgy2hf
– BIG EAST MBB (@BIGEASTMBB) February 28, 2016
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The group of sophomores — including Khadeen Carrington and Ismael Sanogo — were the primary reasons Willard believed his team would turn it around despite last season’s disastrous finish and the subsequent transfers of New Jersey natives Sterling Gibbs (UConn) and Jaren Sina (George Washington).
“I believed in this group,” Willard said. “I looked at the program, I looked at my roster and I said, ‘That kid’s good, that kid’s going to be really good, that kid can be really good. I spent five years grinding in this job to get that roster. I believed in that roster and that to me was the biggest thing. I believed in these kids and that’s how I went.”
Aside from the play all season of his sophomores, Willard also credited senior guard Derrick Gordon, the only openly gay player in Division 1 men’s basketball and the only senior honored on Senior Day.
“It was great to see him go out the way he went out,” Willard said of Gordon, who will appear in the NCAA Tournament with his third team after playing in the Big Dance with Western Kentucky and UMass. “He deserved it. He deserved to have his last college game go this way.”
For Willard, the trip to the Big Dance marks the high point of a rough six-year stint that began with him being hired to replaced the tumultuous Bobby Gonzalez and has included calls on more than one occasion by some fans for Willard himself to be fired.
“I look at what we took when we came here and where we are now, that’s what I take a lot of pride in,” Willard said.
Willard was pressed on what it meant to make the Big Dance.
“I’m not saying anything until I make it,” he said.
But Lyons, Pitino and Xavier coach Chris Mack all had praise for Willard, who will surely get some votes for Big East Coach of the Year.
“I will say how proud we are of the team and how they are playing,” Lyons told SNY.tv. “Today was a big win but there’s still plenty of season left and more work to do.”
Pitino, whose own team won’t play in the NCAAs because of a self-imposed postseason ban, echoed similar sentiments of praise for his student.
“I’ve said two things all along about Kevin Willard,” Pitino told SNY.tv. “No. 1 it takes time and patience to build a strong program. No. 2, I’ve had players and assistants move on to be head coaches. He was always in my top three, so I’m happy and excited for him.”
Xavier’s Mack, a candidate for National and Big East Coach of the Year honors, also praised Willard.
“There’s not a coach that is more prepared,” Mack said. “They’re a surefire NCAA Tournament team and he’s one of the best coaches in the league.”
And one year after convincing his boss he would get it done, Kevin Willard is headed to the Big Dance for the first time.
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