Maryland needs to address why Kevin Willard left

Ding dong, Kevin Willard is gone.

Good riddance, Maryland fans cried Sunday after 10 days of feeling captive to their (former) basketball coach’s leverage play.

What Willard initially pitched as his public crusade to elevate Maryland’s men’s program quickly morphed into a more cynical episode as it became clear he probably would decamp to Villanova.

What was the use of publicly cataloging Maryland’s failings if he knew he was out the door? Now that we know the ending to the story, Willard’s news conferences during his team’s NCAA Tournament run amount to the basketball version of cruel breakup letters.

Maryland will move on from being publicly dumped. A very good replacement — whether that’s a seasoned winner such as Texas A&M’s Buzz Williams or an up-and-comer (think the next version of Michigan’s Dusty May) — will gladly sign up to coach in the Big Ten and recruit from the rich Baltimore-Washington talent pool. That coach will be backed by a new athletic director, perhaps with a fresh vision. The Terps will have a winning roster again, even if that’s a mighty hill to climb in time for next season.

But the issues Willard brought screaming to light will not vanish with him.

The natural impulse for Maryland fans and officials will be to forget the departed coach as quickly as possible and decide they’re better off without him.

“We are working with urgency and thoroughness to find the next leader of our program, and we are confident that we will find a coach who will continue to build and grow the legacy of success of Maryland Basketball,” University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines said in a statement Sunday confirming a national search for Willard’s replacement has begun.

But moving on without assessing what went wrong would be a wasted opportunity.

Instead, it’s worth trying to figure out why Willard left and how Maryland might reshape its athletic department to prevent being spurned by its next coach.