Terrapins get bigger, more physical as Kevin Willard begins his second season at Maryland

COLLEGE PARK — In the wake of an in-season coaching change in late 2021, the path back to relevancy for Maryland basketball seemed far off.

A new hire arrived in early 2022, but many still braced for a protracted rebuild by a coach with little to no familiarity with a state that loves its basketball as much as its crab cakes, let alone the tough league that it played in.

Kevin Willard, however, was the catalyst Maryland didn’t know it needed. And after a 16-1 home record and surprise NCAA Tournament appearance in his maiden season, he and his Terrapins begin their new campaign Tuesday night at home against Mount St. Mary’s.

Willard goes into this season with an even greater understanding of what it will take to tame the Big Ten.

“I always respected the Big Ten. Looking at it from the outside, you knew [it had] great coaches. But going through the league was really eye-opening,” Willard said. “So for me, the biggest learning adjustment was really understanding the league.”

Under Willard’s system, Maryland was expected to play fast and spread the floor. That worked to the tune of 22 wins and an undefeated home conference record last season.  But by the time March rolled around, the Terrapins were gassed.

“That team gave me everything that they could possibly do,” Willard said. “We kind of hit the ceiling [in the NCAA Tournament’s second round] against Alabama when you really go back and look at it. And they gave us everything.”

After cobbling together a roster on the fly in a matter of weeks after being hired in March 2022, Willard had a full offseason to assess Maryland’s deficiencies. 

“The biggest thing that I realized is that we just weren’t athletic enough at times,” he said.

With a league stocked with bigs the size of Redwoods, Willard retooled the roster to emphasize physicality to go along with the quickness his team showed a season ago.

“I feel like we left something on the table, losing to Alabama,” Willard said. 

“We kind of drifted off,” said forward Donta Scott, the fifth-year senior who has returned for one more ride in College Park. “And I feel like new guys coming in, new talent coming in, and having some of the same old guys come and stay, we can probably go a little bit farther this year, especially with the monsters that we have.”

Three of those monsters are highly-touted freshmen DeShawn Harris-Smith (6-foot-5), Jamie Kaiser Jr. (6-foot-6) and Jahnathan Lamothe (6-foot-4). Combined, they represent Maryland’s highest-ranked freshman recruiting class in five years, and they’re chomping at the bit to get their college careers started.

“They’re physically ready to play,” Willard. said. “Most freshmen come in, and really one of the biggest hurdles that they have is that physically they can’t compete at this level. DeShawn, Jamie, Jahn have worked tirelessly to get in great shape…so physically, they’re able to play and compete at this level.”

The new trio joins the returning core of Scott, Jahmir Young and Julian Reese, with the latter two named to the preseason All-Big Ten team. Reese has added 15 pounds of muscle to his frame after turning heads against the Big Ten’s elite a year ago, and Young was a unanimous selection for the honor after just one season in the conference.

“I think the biggest jump will come from Jahmir in the fact that I just think he’ll understand the league so much better,” Willard said. “He understands how we’re playing. He understands the system so much better. I think he’s thinking like a point guard now, where last year, he was really just trying to survive.”

Sprinkle in one more addition — a Big Ten veteran in Indiana transfer forward Jordan Geronimo, whom his new coach calls “the Swiss Army knife”  — and Willard thinks he has all the pieces necessary to raise Maryland’s level.

“What I love about this roster is … the same five guys aren’t going to be out there all night long,” Willard said. “We were kind of stuck a little bit last year with a six-, seven-man rotation at the most. This year, I can see us going nine, 10, 11 at times.”

The offense will still run through Young, the DeMatha Catholic grad who came home to Prince George’s County last season after three years at Charlotte and averaged 15.8 points per game.

“Jahmir was kind of like me last year going through the Big Ten for the first time,” Willard said. “As you saw his numbers towards the end of the year, they kind of started to struggle a little bit.”

Young’s goal ahead of last season was to play in the NCAA Tournament. With that accomplished — and another likely in the cards come March — Willard stated he wants to see his point guard take the steps to become an NBA-caliber player.

“He’s matured a little bit,” Willard said. “He understands that he’s got some guys around him now that can help him be a better player. And I think that’s been his biggest step and what he still has to kind of continue to improve.”

Young entered an environment last season with Scott and Hakim Hart (now a graduate transfer at Villanova) as the established leaders and identity of the Terrapins as they bridged the moribund end of the Mark Turgeon era to the implementation of Willard’s way. 

Now, he’s taking more of an initiative to put his leadership stamp on his hometown team.

“Just being able to communicate with my teammates, being able to lead with my voice,” Young said. “I feel like I’m a huge player who likes to lead by example in my actions. But being able to be a point guard and be able to control the tempo, and really just making it easier for the other guys on the court.

“I love being coached by coach Willard — the tempo that he plays at, the expectations that he has for us. I feel like that’s going to take us to the next level, individually and collectively.”