Kevin Willard’s Coaching Evolution: “You Can’t Be Stubborn in This Era”

Villanova head coach Kevin Willard appeared alongside CBS insider Jon Rothstein in an episode of the “Inside College Basketball Now” podcast aired on Tuesday, Feb. 10, discussing the way he took the reins from hall of famer Jay Wright and adapted that winning style to the era of the transfer portal.

Wright remains intensely involved with the Wildcats, providing advice and fundraising efforts in his role as a special advisor to the president. 

“This is gonna be Jay’s program, he’s got his stamp on this thing, and I’m good with that,” Willard said. “My job is to get it back to the level where he had it… His personality and the way he coached and the way they played, we will always embrace that and we will always kinda have that same mentality.”

Willard got a taste of taking over a program with well-established coaching ties when he was at Seton Hall. Bill Raftery and P.J. Carlesimo both coached the Pirates for more than a decade, but they never achieved the same level of success that Wright did — Carlesimo’s 1988-89 team lost in overtime in the championship game — and had jobs away from the program during Willard’s time there, giving him more of an ability to put his own stamp on Seton Hall.

Jay Wright, on the other hand, is Villanova.

Taking the Reins

“It’s like ‘hey, I’m the head coach, I have a huge responsibility at this program, but I love the fact that I’ve taken over one of the best jobs in college basketball.’ But the reason it’s one of the best jobs in college basketball is because of the job Jay Wright did. I’m not gonna sit there and B.S. myself like ‘oh, I created Villanova,’ that would be lunatic,” Willard said. “I think I’m old enough and been through it, won enough games, lost enough games to understand like ‘hey man, this is great, I’m the Villanova head coach’ but to embrace Coach Wright, because he was the best.”

Willard said that one of his first tasks in modernizing Villanova basketball is to adjust to a new era of college sports, one where recruits agree to six-figure (or more) deals before enrolling in a class — and one where opposing coaches can roll out a Brinks truck and lure top talents away.

Wildcats’ alumnus Mikal Bridges, who redshirted during the 2015-16 season as he built muscle and worked on his shooting, serves as one example of how the game has changed in less than a decade. Willard said that in the current climate, top talents won’t want to wait in the wings… and it doesn’t make sense to make them do so when they’re bringing in the big bucks.

Portal Season

“My job is to just kinda get into — it’s the portal now, it’s recruiting differently, it’s building a team so much differently than redshirting Mikal Bridges,” Willard said. “I don’t think we’re redshirting Mikal anymore: that kind of stuff. It’s my job to keep the personality that Jay put on this program, but it’s my job to revolutionize what we do at Villanova.”

Willard said that the transfer portal forces him to remain flexible. He can’t lock into one style of roster building or coaching when players come and go. During the 2024-25 season, which he spent at Maryland, Willard built his team around a frontcourt of Julian Reese and future No. 13 overall pick Derik Queen. With Villanova this year, his team takes close to half their shots from three and hinges on guard play, forward Duke Brennan playing the five.

“I think the biggest thing the transfer portal has done for me evaluating players is ‘how do you want to play?’” Willard said, going on to describe how he augmented the Terrapins’ roster heading into the previous season.

“Alright, I’ve got two great big guys. If we can’t shoot, it doesn’t matter that I have the best center and a top ten pick. So I think what I’ve done is ‘how do I want to play, who do I have returning,’ let’s evaluate from there how we can play. You can’t be stubborn in this era. I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned, you can’t just say ‘well, I want to play this way…’ I just don’t think that works anymore.”