Maryland basketball nearly pulled off their third win against a ranked opponent when Michigan State came to town earlier this week, but the last-second loss pushed the Terps back to .500 overall as the fan conversation once again shifted towards the program’s next head coach. That’s been a popular question for Maryland athletic director Damon Evans in recent months, but it’s a question he’s more than happy to field.
“The great thing is we got a lot of people who are interested in this,” Evans added on the latest episode of Hear the Turtle. That's the beauty of the University of Maryland.”
Maryland partnered with the Parker Executive Search weeks ago to begin navigating and sifting through interested candidates, but fans have watched a handful of coveted coaching targets crossed off the list in recent weeks. Iona head coach Rick Pitino became the latest name and caught the attention of Maryland fans once more on Thursday morning when reports emerged that Pitino and Iona were nearing a lifetime contract. Pitino isn’t the first coach to have renewed midseason contract negotiations emerge after being linked to the Maryland job; Auburn and head coach Bruce Pearl agreed to a new eight-year contract in late January while USC announced an extension for head coach Andy Enfield weeks ago despite the contract actually extended following the 2021-22 season. While Maryland continues to scour the market for its next head coach, Evans admitted the midseason contract negotiations aren’t something that surprises him.
“Don't you think that those institutions that have those coaches sitting there, their ADs are saying let's get our guy locked up before Maryland, or before Louisville comes after them? Look at what [Auburn] just did with Bruce Pearl. You're gonna start seeing a lot more of that. Look at what they did when USC wanted to drop Andy Enfield’s contract say he got a contract extension. Institutions are looking to protect themselves but we're gonna do our due diligence and go find a great coach.”
Which leads to the million dollar question—what is Evans looking for in Maryland’s next head coach?
“You got to be the CEO of the program, you’ve got to build the leader because being the head coach is more than just about X's and O's. Being the head coach, you’ve got to manage the staff, you got to hire staff, you got to engage the fan base, you got to be able to deal with a lot of different things. You got to deal with the faculty and the university community. Also, on top of that, you got to help develop the young men and you got to help develop them in a way both academically and athletically. I want them to be great on both sides of the equation.”
The ability to recruit locally is also a coveted trait in Maryland’s search.
“If you're not from this area, then you need to make sure that you have someone on your staff who is or understands this area and has recruited this area before because when you think of the DMV and the DC Catholic League and the AAU teams around here and you can go on up through Philly and in the surrounding area, there's some great talent around this particular area.” Evans also added that play style is an important trait to evaluate because “style of play excites the fan base, let’s make no mistake about it.”
While Maryland fans will work to remain patient with the ongoing search, Evans expressed pleasure in the trajectory of the football program under head coach Mike Locksley.
“I'm going to give Locks all the time in the world because I believe in him and what I've seen so far has indicated that we're moving in the right direction. We took the next step by making it to a record of 6-6 and getting bowl eligible so that was very, very positive for us and then winning the bowl game was an another step that was significant.” Replenishing the program’s depth was the first step but while he detailed why he’s confident in the progress from football, Evans also discussed where the program needs to take the next step.”
“In some of those games in which we didn't seem to be as competitive, we got to become more competitive against the Ohio State's, the Penn State's you know, the Michigan State's, teams like that. And I think we're close. If you look back at the Penn State game, it's 14-14 at the beginning of the fourth quarter and we kind of—I’m going to use a basketball vernacular—we shot ourselves out of the game.