It’s a funny dynamic: While Willard’s 1 NCAAT win 5 tournaments at Seton Hall may get the blood boiling from some diehard SHU fans, it’s not looked at the same way by the outside world when it comes to hiring Willard. The fact he generated 6 NCAAT teams in 7 seasons (yes we can’t just remove the 2019-20 year, his best one) at Seton Hall speaks more than the 6-game record because of how low-budget Seton Hall has always been.
But then what Willard is going to learn quickly when you step up to a program with big resources and expectations, that 1-5 record is a huge deal because just getting to the Tournament isn’t the goal like it is at SHU. And yeah I know the goal at SHU should be national titles too that’s great, but in reality we are not playing the same deck of cards so it’ll take some heavy lifting or big runs like we had with PJ which has happened once in 40+ years.
Now if you ask this diehard what things made my blood boil under Willard they would be the following. (In no particular order)
1. The January Swoon. Which prevented much higher seed lines and potential easier tournament advancement.
2. The lack of recruiting top tier players after the Whitehead class. Only Myles Powell, Myles Cale, and Brandon Weston were top 100 recruits coming out of HS.
3. The inability to recruit a true PG, which forced us to play many players out of position.
4. The constant complaining in a press conference after a loss and very little accountability in those scenarios, compared to the his jovial joking buddy buddy attitude with everyone after a win. It was really a polarizing difference.
5. The inbounds plays. To me they were really bad and lacked any creativity. And I don’t wanna hear about the Sandro play against Butler. That was in his 10th season where he admits he stole it from watching a late night Sacramento Kings game. It took 10 seasons to say hmm let me look at what someone else has done well.
6. The missed opportunity to win the BE Regular season title outright at home on senior night against Nova or the following game vs Creighton. To be little old Seton Hall those opportunities have been few and far between and we let that moment which belonged to us alone slip away. Instead we watched Creighton rain confetti down on their home court and parade around like we finished 3rd. Which we technically did in terms of tie breakers.
These are pretty much the major ones.
But you could add players being placed in his dog house, massive blowouts on the road to a top team (seemed to happen once a year), and not being able to maintain position in the AP poll.
