Villanova’s Kevin Willard refuses to apologize for ‘fire my staff’ joke
Kevin Willard saw better days as coach of the Villanova men’s basketball team following Friday’s loss to Utah State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. And now Willard’s in-game remarks about firing his coaching staff sent an unintended message that subsequently went viral.
During the first half of Friday’s game, Willard told CBS Sports reporter Lauren Shehadi that he was going to fire Villanova’s staff because of their poor performance in preparing his team to play. Willard seemed angry at his team’s lack of execution and joked about his staff, but didn’t smile or make Shehadi laugh.
“I’m going to lay off my team,” Willard said. “Because we gave up eight points on out-of-bounds defense. The only thing I’m going to do is fire them and hire a new staff.”
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After the final horn, Willard was asked about his in-game comments and doubled down on upcoming personnel decisions.
“We gave up a big 3-pointer late,” Willard said. “I will probably have to make some changes to my team due to our poor performance.”
During the follow-up question, Willard interrupted a reporter who again highlighted the staff’s comments.
“It’s a joke,” Willard said, disturbed. “God bless him…I don’t care. Welcome to my life. It’s a joke.”
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Villanova earned a third-place finish in the Big East this season before falling to 11th-seeded Georgetown in the conference tournament and going one-and-done in March Madness.
The Wildcats blew a 10-point second-half lead against the Aggies, an unexpected early exit from Willard, who took Maryland to the second weekend of last season’s NCAA Tournament.
“You know, we went up by 10 points and then we gave up three offensive rebounds. Give them credit,” Willard said. “They’re a veteran team, with older guards. They did a great job late in the game, but we had our chances. Then we were up 73-71 and we missed two layups that really hurt us. Give them credit. They took advantage of it.”
Utah State (29-6) will look to defeat top-seeded Arizona on Sunday night in the second round.
“We didn’t like our seed,” Aggies coach Jerrod Calhoun said. “We didn’t really like being seeded nine. We won 28 games. We won the regular season title, we won the tournament title. So when this team has the advantage and they play with a little swagger, a little toughness and resilience, we can cause a lot of problems.”
