How Kevin Willard’s coaching tree keeps sprouting new branches
Grant Billmeier, Tony Skinn and more dish on how Willard prepared them to be head coaches while at Seton Hall.
Before the Maryland men’s basketball team left for an offseason trip to Italy, coach Kevin Willard spoke with reporters about the usual offseason topics, including the number of departures and newcomers on his coaching staff.
“Luckily, I’ve been through this before, but I’ve never lost three in a year,” Willard said.
No kidding. All three who left Maryland – two of whom previously worked for Willard at Seton Hall – were offered head coaching positions. Grant Billmeier returned to New Jersey to take over NJIT; Tony Skinn is now at his alma mater, George Mason; and Maryland’s director of player personnel Tevon Saddler became the youngest head coach in Division I basketball at his alma mater, Nicholls.
This eye-catching exodus doubled Willard’s coaching tree – former assistants who went on to head up their own programs – from three to six. That tree already included Dan McHale’s three-year stint at Eastern Kentucky, Donald Copeland currently at Wagner and, of course, Shaheen Holloway.
You may already know there are five Seton Hall alumni are working as head coaches in D1 basketball, including reigning national champion Dan Hurley at UConn. But I wanted to learn about Willard’s six alumni, and how they developed at Seton Hall.
“His leadership,” Skinn told me. “I just think that it made it so much easier for me to learn some of the things I knew I had to learn. Again, he empowers you so much.”
My interest in Willard’s management style was piqued when local media spoke with Billmeier last April at NJIT’s Wellness and Events Center.
A native of Pennington, Billmeier played center at Seton Hall from 2003-07 before launching his coaching career. He was Willard’s first director of basketball of operations (DOBO) when Willard arrived at Hall in 2010. Billmeier moved up to assistant coach there after spending one season as an assistant at Fairleigh Dickinson.
His 6-foot-10 frame could be seen prowling around the Seton Hall bench 2015 through 2022, before he followed Willard to Maryland. And Billmeier’s dedication to Willard was well-reciprocated.
“I think a big part of that is he prepares guys, he gives guys responsibility so when they do move to that seat, there’s nothing they haven’t done – from coaching a team in a Blue-White scrimmage to dealing with alumni to doing postgame radio interviews,” Billmeier told us in April. “He really makes it so you feel like you’re gonna be on the job one day.”
I asked Billmeier for an example of what Willard did to prepare him for this moment. At the time, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
“I think he’s not afraid to delegate a lot of responsibilities to assistant coaches,” he said. “Summer of 2019, he was an assistant coach for USA in the Pan-American Games and he was gone for three weeks, so he gave me the responsibility of running the team, getting the team ready for our foreign trip.”
And when Willard served a suspension to begin the 2019-20 season, Billmeier was left in charge.
“I was able to coach a game on the foreign trip. I was able to coach an exhibition game. I coached a regular-season game against Wagner. So I’ve been in a lot of different spots along the way where, the first time I stand up on the sideline, it won’t be my first time. It’ll be different because it’s my program, but he allowed me to coach a team three different times… so I kind of got the feel for it then.”
Skinn remembers his first impression of Willard in 2018. The Louisiana Tech assistant had flown up to Newark to interview for an opening on Seton Hall’s staff.
“You’re thinking high-major coach, Big East coach, you’re thinking this guy’s getting ready to pull up in some fancy car,” Skinn said. “Man, first thing I remember was him picking me up in this old Lexus. A ’97-something.”
Seeing that bit of humility might have helped Skinn get comfortable ahead of what turned out to be a 24-hour visit to Seton Hall. He knew in his heart of hearts that he’d take the job if it was offered.
Assistant coaches handle a range of duties for their programs. They do crucial work on the recruiting trail. They develop players, oftentimes specializing in a position they themselves used to play. And they’ll often scout upcoming opponents. Willard likes to have his staff intertwined on all of the above.
Skinn had coached offense and recruited at Louisiana Tech, but he had never done scouts. “Then I get to Seton Hall and I’ve got Villanova as a scout,” he told me.
“I knew when taking the job, there was a lot of stuff I didn’t do at my previous stop that I knew taking this job was going to require because of who I was replacing in Shaheen Holloway,” Skinn said. “There’s a reason why Shaheen is where he’s at. He’s been successful thus far and that goes back to kind of that autonomy and those responsibilities that Coach Willard just gave to him, and that was the same thing for me.”
Willard also seeks out his assistants’ opinions and doesn’t make decisions autocratically, his staff have said. That’s especially telling when you hear it from Saddler, who was not only the youngest man on Maryland’s staff last season but in the director of player personnel/DOBO role, which at other schools might not be seen as equal to the assistant coaches.
“I tell people all the time, ‘I want to form my staff like Willard’s,’” Saddler told Glenn Clark Radio. “We were all no-ego guys at the end of the day, but Coach would always listen. He would always take ideas. Some days it’d stick, some days it didn’t.”
Skinn spent three seasons at Seton Hall, went to Ohio State for one year and rejoined Willard with the Terrapins. He counts Willard as both a friend and a mentor. And not surprisingly, the checklist of qualities and experiences Skinn needed in order to get head-coaching looks filled out in short order.
“He wasn’t micromanaging it,” Skinn said. “It was more so, ‘You guys burn the fires out, and when you need me, just come and get me.’”
A head coach can be a workaholic who doesn’t delegate efficiently. He might even be selfish and not want his assistant coaches to get “too good.”
Willard’s former assistants make it clear that he develops his coaches with the same zeal he developed players like Myles Powell, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Jared Rhoden. The “how” was worth delving into, but the “why” is obvious: He wants his assistant coaches to move on to bigger and better things.
Even if it leaves him rebuilding his staff from scratch at Maryland.
Holloway had worked for Willard at Iona before they moved to Seton Hall. When Holloway left Willard’s staff for the Saint Peter’s job in 2018, Willard reminded him to take the MAAC seriously.
“The one piece of advice he gave me was to look into the league and see how good the coaches are,” he told A Daly Dose of Hoops at the time. “He said that’s one of the things he didn't do when he first got the job at Iona. … That was one of the main things he told me, to just make sure I knew I what I was going to get myself into.” We all know how Holloway fared with the Peacocks.
Skinn shared a similar story of encouragement with me. Skinn was going through the interview process at George Mason while the Terrapins’ coaches were regrouping after their NCAA Tournament loss to Alabama.
“I just remember him pulling me to the side like, ‘Hey man, whatever you need to do to get that job, that’s what you need to effin’ do,’” Skinn said. “And so anytime you have that type of support, knowing how important that was to him and his staff, man, that’s what it’s all about. He’s a hell of a leader and an even better person.”
The best sign of a fruitful coaching tree is when two of your former assistants make sure to get each other on the schedule. Billmeier’s NJIT Highlanders are hosting Holloway’s Pirates for a preseason charity exhibition, then visiting Copeland at Wagner and Skinn at George Mason four days apart in late November.
“Big Grant, that’s my brother,” Skinn said. “When he got the job, I just remember I called him or I might have texted him, gave him some time, and I’m like, ‘Yo, congratulations, but I need a game!’”
For the record, Willard will face an old friend this year when Saddler brings Nicholls to College Park in December. Could a Maryland-Seton Hall or even a Maryland-NJIT game be around the corner? One thing is evident: Those relationships are still there.
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Thanks for stopping by. Believe it or not (I hardly believe it myself), this was the 100th edition of Guarden State. It was pure coincidence that No. 100 wound up being this in-depth feature idea I’d sat on since April. Thankful to Tony Skinn and George Mason’s athletic communications folks for arranging our interview.
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