Kevin Willard, who has posted 335 victories across 18 seasons as a head coach and led teams to seven NCAA Tournaments, was named the William B. Finneran Endowed Head Men's Basketball Coach at Villanova University in March 2025. Willard guided the University of Maryland to 27 victories, a Top 25 national ranking, and a Sweet Sixteen appearance.
 
Willard led the Terrapins to 65 victories in three seasons in College Park, including a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances. In 2024-25, he was named the NABC East District Coach of the Year. In his first season at the helm (2022-23), he led the Terps to a 22-13 record, a Top 25 national ranking, and a Second Round NCAA Tournament appearance.
 
Prior to his tenure at Maryland, Willard coached for 12 seasons at Seton Hall, winning 225 games, including the 2016 Big East Tournament championship at Madison Square Garden that culminated in a 69-67 win over a Villanova team that weeks later would go on to capture the NCAA national championship. He is the only coach in Seton Hall program history to post four consecutive 20-win seasons and is second on the program's all-time wins list.

From 2010-22 Willard returned Seton Hall to its status as one of the premier programs in the BIG EAST. He reached five NCAA Tournament appearances in the last six events that were played. He led the Pirates to the Big East Tournament Title in 2015-16 and the regular-season title in 2019-20. He was the 2016 Big East Coach of the Year and the 2020 USBWA District II Coach of the Year during those runs. Additionally, he was a three-time Peter A. Carlesimo Met Writers Coach of the Year and the NABC District 5 Coach of the Year. He also has the most non-conference wins of any coach in the nation against Big Ten teams since 2014-15. 
 
In addition to his coach of the year accolades, he was also named one of Forbes Top 10 NCAA Basketball Coaches for the Next 10 Years. His teams won the prestigious NABC Team Academic Excellence Award for five straight years and earned three NCAA Academic Progress Rate Public Recognition Awards. 

In a six-year span, he was one of 10 active head coaches in the Power 6 conferences to achieve a regular-season championship, a conference tournament championship, and a conference coach of the year honor. He also finished in the top four in the Big East on six occasions. In 2018, he led the Pirates to their first victory in an NCAA Tournament since 2004. 
 
Through his 12 seasons at Seton Hall, Willard produced a 225-161 overall record. He ranks second all-time in victories (225) in Seton Hall basketball history and has the most wins in conference play in program history (110). He is also the 11th all-time winningest coach in Big East history, dating to the conference's inception in 1979. The Pirates also had 82 combined wins between the Big East regular-season and postseason, second only to Villanova in the conference, since the 2015-16 season. 

His teams at Seton Hall were ranked in the Top 25 in five of his last eight seasons with a high ranking of No. 8 in the 2019-20 season. In 2020-21 the Pirates were ranked as high as No. 15 and spent eight weeks in the polls. 

Willard’s Seton Hall teams also posted an 11-5 record against Big Ten teams over his last eight seasons, which included wins over Maryland in 2018 and 2019. Willard's teams also won road games at Michigan, Iowa, Penn State and Rutgers and beat Indiana at home. Willard held the most non-conference wins over Big Ten teams of any coach since 2014-15.

Powell was Seton Hall's first Consensus First-Team All-American since 1953. Overall, he mentored 15 All-Big East selections and three Big East All-Rookie Team honorees. 

Making a huge emphasis on effort in the classroom, Willard's student-athletes combined for 72 BIG EAST All-Academic team selections, and the program boasted a perfect single-year academic progress rate in six of the nine NCAA reports since he served as head coach, as well as perfect multi-year APR scores. The NCAA has also recognized Seton Hall with NCAA APR Public Recognition awards for boasting an APR in the top 10 percent in the country for three consecutive years. The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) gave the program the Team Academic Excellence Award for five consecutive years.

Willard showed to be a strong evaluator and recruiter of talent, as he brought in a consensus top-15 national recruiting class in 2014, led by Whitehead, the program's first McDonald's All-American since 2001 and just the fifth all-time. His 2021-22 recruiting class was also rated in the top 25 by 247Sports. 

The 2020-21 season marked Seton Hall and Willard's sixth consecutive top-four finish in the Big East Conference, one of the best basketball conferences in the country. Only Villanova also completed six straight top-four finishes in the same span. 

Prior to the start of his career as a head coach, Willard was an assistant and associate head coach for six years at Louisville, where he was mentored by Naismith Basketball Hall of Famer Rick Pitino.

At Louisville, Willard was responsible for assisting with the Cardinals' game preparations, scouting and preparing game plans. He also served as chief recruiting coordinator. During his tenure, Louisville was ranked in the Top 25 for five seasons and reached the postseason in each of his six years. 

Prior to Louisville, Willard worked with Pitino as a coaching associate with the Boston Celtics for four years. His duties with the Celtics included game and practice preparation, scouting and assisting the coaching staff in all facets of basketball operations. He also provided advance scouting, videotape breakdowns and assisted with individual workouts prior to games.

A basketball lifer, Willard played point guard on the Division I level for four years; the last three coming at the University of Pittsburgh. He earned Big East All-Academic honors while appearing in 60 games for the Panthers. He spent his freshman season at Western Kentucky, where he played in the backcourt and sank over 40 percent of his three-point field goal attempts.

Willard hails from New York and was born in Huntington on Long Island, but played his high school basketball at Bowling Green High School (Ky.) while his father was the head coach at Western Kentucky. He earned second-team All-State honors as a senior and helped his team to a combined 76-15 record in his final three prep seasons.

Willard is married to the former Julie Wagner and they have two sons, Colin and Chase.