Villanova’s Kevin Willard threatens to fire entire staff mid-NCAA Tournament

The No. 8 Villanova Wildcats met the No. 9 Utah State Aggies in the first round of the men’s NCAA Tournament on Friday afternoon. Villanova held a 39-37 lead at halftime, but head coach Kevin Willard was wholly unimpressed by his team’s performance.

At one point in the first half, Lauren Shehadi of CBS Sports asked Willard about Villanova giving up 16 points in the paint to Utah State. When asking how to keep the Aggies out of the paint, Willard didn’t flinch.

“I’m gonna fire my staff,” Willard said on the TNT broadcast.

Shehadi interjected, “Not now!”

Willard pressed on undeterred: “Yeah, I am, because we’ve given up eight points on underneath out-of-bounds defense. So, the only thing I’m gonna do is fire them and get a new staff.” Willard then walked off into his huddle.

There is a 99.9% chance that Willard was joking and likely perturbed to have to do an in-game interview during a stressful March Madness opener.

In all seriousness, Villanova’s struggles in the paint could be attributed to losing freshman 6-foot-8 forward Matt Hodge to a torn ACL on Feb. 28. Hodge was a starter for the Wildcats and averaged 9.2 points and 3.6 rebounds.

While Willard wasn’t pleased, Villanova merely making the NCAA Tournament is a step forward in a post-Jay Wright world. Wright shockingly retired in 2022, and the Wildcats haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since.

This is Willard’s first season with the Wildcats. Villanova hired him from Maryland last March. This season, Villanova finished the regular season with a 24-7 overall record, 15-5 in Big East conference play.

“With this much history and this much tradition, getting back to being a winning program and getting everybody to understand that this is every year [that] it’s expected to be in the NCAA Tournament,” Willard told NBC Sports Philadelphia last weekend.

Willard added: “I put a lot of pressure on myself and the staff this year to get to this point because I know how important it is to this program and to this university.”

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