SAN DIEGO — Kevin Willard was aimlessly walking around Manhattan in March 2015, dazed after an early Big East Tournament exit that had capped an ugly close to the season.
After five seasons at Seton Hall, Willard had just one NIT berth and was just one game over .500. He was uncertain of his future.
“I thought there might be a chance [I was getting fired],” he recalled in a phone interview with The Post.
The next day, he sat down with Pat Lyons, the athletic director at the time. Lyons didn’t want to make a change — as long as he got the right answers to two questions.
“Is this what you still want to do?” Lyons asked. And: “Has your vision of what you can accomplish here changed?”
The first answer was yes, and the second answer was no. Then Willard, knowing his job was safe, told Lyons: “I’m not losing next year.”
“I’ve never seen a confidence like that,” said Lyons, who is now an executive vice president and chief of staff at Seton Hall.
Willard then met with his young team, a group of highly regarded freshmen who dropped nine of their last 10 games. They were just as defiant.
“This s–t ain’t happening again,” they agreed.
The program has soared since then, reaching five of a possible six NCAA Tournaments, not including 2020, when COVID-19 cut the season short for Willard’s best team, the tri-Big East regular-season champions. Seton Hall has been a March Madness constant in the area, the one consistent winner, with at least 20 victories six of the past seven years and seven consecutive top-five finishes in the conference. Friday night, the eighth-seeded Pirates will meet No. 9-seed TCU in a South Region first-round game.
It was the 2015-16 group of Isaiah Whitehead, Khadeen Carrington, Desi Rodriguez, Ismael Sanogo, Mike Nzei and Angel Delgado that began the renaissance. That season, the Hall won the Big East Tournament crown for the first time in 23 years. It remains the only team to knock off Villanova in the league title game since realignment. The Pirates’ success helped Willard bring in more building blocks, players such as Myles Powell, Myles Cale and Sandro Mamukelashvili who have continued that success.
“They started the whole thing,” said Cale, a senior who committed to Seton Hall during that Big East Tournament run. “They started how we play today.”
To Willard, the foundation was set in his third and fourth seasons, with an overwhelmed team that went a combined 9-27 in the Big East. But those teams, led by Sterling Gibbs, Fuquan Edwin and Patrik Auda, were relentless workers, and it rubbed off on the star-studded recruiting class who added a much-needed swagger to Seton Hall.
“When you put the work ethic and the attitude together, that was the changing point in the program,” Willard said.
Seton Hall (21-10) is in a very different spot now. It has become an NCAA Tournament mainstay. Recruiting has improved, in terms of high school prospects and transfers. The school is in the process of raising money for a practice facility. Players regularly improve. Willard has established an identity at the New Jersey school, one of grit, determination and a workmanlike ethos. He can go down South or out West and people know about Seton Hall.
“We’ve definitely now become a national brand, which is great,” Willard said. “What we do from a player-development standpoint has been huge. Guys know we’re going to work with them, they’re going to get better.”
It wouldn’t have been possible had Lyons not shown patience at a time when many athletic directors wouldn’t have. One decision set up the last seven years of success in South Orange.
“People never realize what it really takes to build a problem, and never mind just building a program at any level, but in the Big East. It’s just so hard,” Lyons said. “We have a few administrators here from the athletic department, and I said, ‘Guys, you got to enjoy this. You never know when you’re going to get back here. Kevin’s made it just seem like it’s a natural thing.”