Maryland men’s basketball will kick off the 2024-25 season in just 18 days as head coach Kevin Willard faces pressure to get the program back into postseason play, while fans remain hopeful for the first trip into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2016. He’ll do so with several new faces along the roster as Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Selton Miguel and Derik Queen team up with Julian Reese and DeShawn Harris-Smith in the starting lineup, but Willard will have experience to lean on through his staff.
But as he prepares for his third season with the program, it’s David Cox who sits as the seasoned vet among Kevin Willard’s assistants.
“I’m comfortable now,” Cox told IBG. “Comfortable with the coach, comfortable with the staff. We've gone through a couple of recruiting cycles, a couple of changes on the staff, but yeah, I'm feeling entrenched.”
It’s a bit of a different feeling for Maryland’s newest assistant, Kevin Norris, who joined the program back in March to fill the staff vacancy left by Mike Jones.
“Instead of me having to get on the plane all the time, I can just drive down the street now. It's really easy,” he told IBG.
While Cox noted the modern era of college basketball forced the staff to “be mindful of how you put your team together,” Norris noted how quickly the new-look roster gelled together through the offseason.
“The fact that they like each other on and off the court, that's usually the biggest thing that just lets you know whether you're going to have a successful basketball team. And that's the start of a good basketball team. They all really, I genuinely believe in my heart, that every last one of the guys, they really, really enjoy being around each other.”
Calculating how the roster would mesh was a big part of the staff’s evaluation, too.
“With the transfer portal, guys can just leave so you have to be mindful of how you put your team together. Now, based on that, you've got a budget, first of all. You've got to get some value out of the guys you're paying. You probably can't – we had a whole bunch of young guys at the end of the bench who don't play and don't develop because they'll just get disgruntled and leave. Also, that doesn't really help them practice, so you need some older guys down there. But then you gotta find some older guys that are gonna be willing to come here for maybe not as much money, maybe not the guarantee of as many minutes but just want to be a part of a winning program, part of the culture, you know, so it's changed a lot.”
On the court, Willard pointed to multiple new faces being able to create offense for themselves after noting “we weren’t going to bring anyone that couldn’t shoot the basketball.”
“You have some guys that can go get their own basket and don't have to be manufactured by Coach Willard,” Norris added.
As heralded freshman Derik Queen is expected to start alongside four veterans, he’s taken the early licks in practice in stride as Julian Reese takes his former high school teammate under his wing.
“They've been battling him,” Cox said.
“Derik had an early rude awakening to the level of physicality and he's made a great adjustment,” Norris added. “And he's now absorbing blows and actually dishing out some as well. So it's been a good thing.”
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