In his final radio show appearance alongside Johnny Holliday this season, Maryland men’s basketball head coach Kevin Willard spoke about what sticks out about Michigan State and their play ahead of Wednesday’s contest, what it takes to have consistent attendance in Big Ten play, potential neutral site games next season and NIL’s focus:
On potential neutral site games in 2025-26
“We have a ton of people, a ton of alumni up there. I mean, I probably go up there in the offseason twice a month to go visit alumni and go out to dinner or go play golf with one of our donors. It's something that we're I think we're playing in The Garden next year, in December. And obviously starting Marquette, we’ll be at Marquette, home Georgetown, at Virginia. We’ll be in The Garden and I think we're playing, I'm trying to get back into the Barclays. It's just with our final stretch and the two home games in December – December becomes really difficult because there's really, I only have six play days. So when you only have six dates to play, it becomes – that's why we usually play buy games in December, because you can be a little bit more flexible buy games.”
On Michigan State
“Coach Izzo has done a phenomenal job with this basketball team because they really, I think it matches his personality to a tee. They are – they're the best rebounding, one of the best rebounding teams in the country. They are the best team in the country at turning turnovers into fast break points. They are really, really – if you turn the basketball over, you're in for a long night. And then everyone says they don't shoot it great, but they shoot it good enough as good as they defend and as good as they get in transition. So a very balanced basketball team and a team that I think can make a really deep run in March.”
On Michigan State’s shooting
“They’re bringing their older guard, [Tre] Holloman, off the bench now to kind of give them some steady play off the bench. They have two freshmen out there that are just phenomenal players, but you know, I think it takes all freshmen sometimes a year or two in college to decide what's a good shot and what's not a good shot. [Jaden] Akins, their starting small forward technically their starting guard, is a heck of a player. Like I said, their numbers are a little sneaky, if you see, if you kind of look at their wins and losses, they struggled shooting. But I can sit there and say that about any team in any loss, they struggled shooting and they lost. Yeah, duh. So I think they're a better shooting team than people realize. We just have to make sure that we get back in transition and we have to limit the amount of second shots they get. Because they rebound better than Illinois, who I thought that was the main reason we won against Illinois – we kept Illinois off the glass.”
On only two Spartan starters averaging double figures
“He’s playing 10 guys. I mean, he really is. I mean, he's playing a legit 10 guys. They bring Coen Carr, probably the best athlete I've seen in a long time. He comes in and gives them a huge spark. Reminds me of Stevie Francis way back in the day, a guy just, you know, would run the floor, catch alley-oops, dunk. And then he rotates his big guys because his big guys run. So we're gonna have to go to our bench just as much as he's going to his because they do wear you out. You got to survive, like, the first ten minutes of the first half, the first five minutes of the second half, because that's really when they run and then they execute extremely low well like you know a coach Izzo team would.”
On Michigan State’s win at Michigan
“Ever since they lost Indiana, they beat Purdue pretty easily, really dominated Michigan the other night, won at Illinois. So again, this is a team that's won three in a row and three really, really tough games. And you know, Wisconsin losing the other night at home to Oregon was huge because I really thought Wisconsin had a pretty good track to get on top of the conference. So it's kind of how a conference with 18 teams kind of stands is you're going to have some – you're going to have a whole lot of movement in the last two weeks of the season.”
On the difference between November and February for Maryland
“I think the biggest thing for me was I kind of figured these guys out a little bit, really, after the Oregon loss. I kind of it just, it kind of hit me a little bit of how we had to play just a little bit different at times. And so I think it was more me figuring out this group, you know, having so many new guys and having four new starters around [Julian], you know, it just took a little bit of time, I think, for those guys to kind of understand. Because we played so many guys in the non-conference, and some of our home non-conference games, guys were only getting 22, 23 minutes. I think once they kind of settled in and realized they're going to play 35 minutes, I think everybody just took a deep breath and relaxed just let the game come to them.”
On five ranked Big Ten teams, improving Maryland’s attendance
“I do think this conference, you know, is just as strong as any conference out there. Probably the SEC and us by far the strongest basketball conferences. When you look at top to bottom, you look at what Minnesota goes out to LA and beats UCLA and USC in back-to-back games. I just, you know, it' really hard and our fan base. You know, I feel like we haven't done a good enough job educating our fan base on just how good of a conference, a basketball conference, this is. I think there's so much talk about football, football, football - rightfully so. But when you look at historically, how good this conference is basketball-wise, I think we need to do a better job of educating our fan base that when you play in Iowa, who six of the last seven years played in the NCAA Tournaments, had four first-round draft picks, that's not a game like people just don't get excited about but I think they need to get excited about those games because they're huge games. Every game we play on the road is sold out. We went to Nebraska. It was a Thursday night at 8:30 at night and they had 16,000 there two hours before the game. So I just think our – the more our fans kind of get educated about Big Ten basketball – obviously, they know about Big Ten football – think the more they get educated that they really at this conference, you know, for 15 nights a year. I'm asking the fans that they got to show up for 15 nights a year, and especially the ten Big Ten games. Because, you know, if you go 9-1 at home or 10-0 at home, you're guaranteeing yourself a pretty darn good seed in the NCAA Tournament.”
“Everyone always talks about Cole [Field House] and, you know, the history and everything, and I think one of the biggest things is times have changed dramatically how these young people view sports. Every game is on TV, every game is on their phone. I check my phone at night and I get, I have a list of scores that pop up right automatically. And so the Xfinity being 18,500 seats when in 2000, 2002, it was probably the right call. Purdue [is] 14,000. The Breslin Center, Michigan State, which is I think is you know as good a place is 14,000. [18,500] nowadays…I mean, I think that's kind of going back to, you know, Xfinity is huge. It's a big building. In a new era where, especially post-COVID, even the older generation is watching more on TV. And you look at the Big Ten Network, even Peacock and Amazon, obviously CBS and Fox, the broadcasts are unbelievable. So you can sit at home, have a beer, have a glass of wine, watch the game and not do it. But I just think the more we can educate our students that are on campus and our fan base about just how it's so much different than the ACC. I'm looking at North Carolina playing Florida State right now and the building's empty. If that's a Big Ten game, that game is gonna be sold out and it's gonna be rocking no matter where we go. It's just, I think the more we can educate them, the more we realize we embrace the Big Ten, which I think our fan base needs to embrace it a little bit more and realize just how great of a conference it is.”
On potential new ways to grow attendance in year four
“That's something that that I'm going to try to focus on a little bit more this offseason, is I'd love for us to be a little bit more of a family-friendly option for people. Getting more families and getting younger kids to the games and having them enjoy it. Doing some fun things, maybe next year, at some games, and getting kids a little bit more involved. We're going to try to get our students much more involved because we have a great student base. They love to study. It's obvious – they're very studious, but I think, you know, again, just getting them to understand the importance that they have because our alumni are phenomenal. But what makes the Xfinity Center and what makes our home court so tough is we have an unbelievable student section and I just don't feel like sometimes they see Iowa or it's Minnesota, and it's like ‘oh they're only playing Minnesota’. It's those games are bigger than Michigan State because you gotta – you have to win those games. And that's something that I think is a little bit of a, just an education process that we need to do a better job of.”
On Michigan State entering Wednesday 6-2 on the road
“They've, I think over the last two weeks, have played – I think we played really good basketball. I think they're the other team in the conference that's just played really, really consistent. They're just a consistent basketball [team]. They consistently run. They consistently screen. I think, again, it's a Tom Izzo-coached team, which is going to be you're gonna, you have to play tough, you're gonna play physical, you're gonna have to run fundamentally sound.”
“Coach Izzo, you know, obviously he's had some really good teams, but when you look at it, I think this is one of his better teams.”
On the four regular season games
“It's an exciting time. You know, the next two weeks are, are great. You know, we have four games left. You're talking about seeding for the NCAA tournament, seeding for the Big Ten tournament. This is kind of what – this is the time of year you live for.”
On the turnaround from year two to year three
“I mean, obviously, you know, last year was extremely disappointing, but it was also a really good learning lesson for me and the staff and kind of understanding going into the beginning of last year – we lost Hakim Hart to Villanova because we didn't have any money to pay him. Villanova paid him. We didn't have any money. Then we lost Ian Martinez, pretty much the same reason. And going into the portal, we just didn't have any NIL money last year and I quickly realized that it was going to be very difficult to win unless you have NIL money. We worked really hard [on] fundraising. We have, the basketball support that we have and the basketball alumni that really helped us with the NIL and the collective, was able to kind of make sure that, knowing that we had JuJu come in, knowing that we had Derik [Queen], we were able to be aggressive early in the portal and be aggressive with what we were going to pay, who we wanted, and how I wanted to build this team. And we were obviously going to build it around JuJu and Derik, so Ja’Kobi, Rodney, Jayhlon, Tafara, obviously Selton. We were aggressive early in the portal to make sure that we didn't repeat what we went through the year before. Because, you know, obviously, if you don't have any money, you're just gonna get blown out of the water.”
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