Maryland men’s basketball hired Kevin Norris to fill the assistant coaching vacancy left by the departure of Mike Jones, the team announced Monday.
Jones, who spent less than a season in College Park, was hired as the head coach at Old Dominion last month. Norris, a Baltimore native who spent the last eight years as an assistant coach at UCF, brings local recruiting connections to the staff along with over a decade of experience on the bench.
“We are excited to add Kevin to our staff,” coach Kevin Willard said in a release. “He is a veteran coach who understands how to develop players and is a tenacious recruiter.”
Norris helped the Knights collect a 148-103 record in his eight seasons in Orlando. He previously had coaching stops at USC, Florida Gulf Coast, UNC Wilmington and Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Norris helped oversee UCF’s defense. The Knights finished as a top-20 KenPom defense this past season after ranking in the top-40 in 2022-23. UCF was eliminated by South Florida in the first round of the NIT to end its current campaign, finishing with an overall 17-17 record.
The Knights earned their first-ever at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament in 2019, defeating VCU in the first round before falling in the Round of 32.
During his stint with USC from 2013-2016, Norris helped Andy Enfeld reach an NCAA Tournament and claim the program’s first 20-win season since 2009 in his final year on staff.
Willard has rounded out the staff for his third season with Norris’ hiring. Norris will take Jones’ spot on the bench, while associate head coach David Cox and assistant coach Greg Manning Jr. are expected to each return for another season.
Willard has experienced a bevy of staff turnover in his short time in College Park. Three coaches departed at the end of his first season — Tevon Saddler, Tony Skinn and Grant Billmeier — while Jones took the Old Dominion job a few weeks prior to the end of the Terps’ tumultuous 2023-24 campaign.
