Former Maryland men’s basketball assistant coach and New Jersey native Grant Billmeier is honored to return close to home as the head coach at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Billmeier, 38, began working in college hoops in 2010 as the director of basketball operations under Kevin Willard at Seton Hall. He then spent the 2014-15 season on Fairleigh Dickinson’s coaching staff before returning to Seton Hall as an assistant coach. Once Willard became the head coach at Maryland, he brought along Billmeier as an assistant.
Billmeier said he felt ready to take on a head coaching role because of his experience with Willard. He mentioned how Willard sets the standard daily and shows how programs should be run.
Willard and Billmeier have been friends and coworkers for years and have worked well together to develop players and teams, including Maryland.
“The University of Maryland is a special place. … [Leaving] wasn’t an easy decision, but at the same time, when you’re an assistant coach at the University of Maryland, it’s never really going to be an easy time to leave there,” Billmeier said on Glenn Clark Radio April 27. “It’s always going to be … a really good team coming in and a good team coming back. I feel like that’s kind of how it was set up. And I just thought this was too good of an opportunity to pass [up].”
Billmeier is coming to NJIT after a successful season with the Terps, who had an overall record of 23-13 and won every home game but one (16-1). He mentioned that working at Maryland really helped shape the way he coaches.
Billmeier appreciated working with players who were hungry for a successful season and worked hard for it.
“It was just kind of like the perfect combination, and I’ve never been a part of a team at the collegiate level that has chemistry the way these guys did this past year. Everyone was on the same page, everyone bought in,” Billmeier said. “… You combine the fact that everyone was kind of hungry, everyone was kind of getting slept on, and at the end of the day, you had 13 guys in the locker room that just wanted to win, and that’s where the success of the season came from.”
Billmeier has been given a lot of credit when it comes to developing center Julian Reese. He worked closely with Reese to help him get to the level he showed during the second half of the 2022-23 season. The 6-foot-9, 230-pound Reese developed into one of the top big men in the Big Ten, averaging 11.4 points and 7.2 rebounds per game this past season.
Billmeier credited Reese’s work ethic, saying Reese eventually texted him every morning to work out.
“Coaches can want it for players, but when players want it for themselves as much if not more than that coach wants it for them, I think that’s when great things happen,” Billmeier said. “… I think [Reese] became a very dominant center and down low, and I think Julian is going to have a magnificent year. He’s one of my all-time favorite people. I absolutely love Julian as a person. My kids are always going to be Julian Reese fans, and I can’t wait to see him have a monster junior year.”
Billmeier grew up in Pennington, N.J., and graduated from St. Patrick High School. He played college hoops at Seton Hall from 2003-2007 and helped the Pirates go to two NCAA Tournaments. He played professionally abroad in Germany and Portugal before pursuing coaching.
Billmeier helped the Pirates make five NCAA Tournaments and win two Big East titles as a coach. He is the fifth former Seton Hall player in the current Division I men’s basketball head coaching ranks.
“Players from New Jersey and coaches from New Jersey, they coach with an edge. … They all play with a major chip on their shoulder,” Billmeier said. “I just think when you come from New Jersey, you’re not New York City, you’re not Philadelphia, you’re squeezed in between them. A lot of kids from New Jersey get overlooked, and they carry that chip with them all the way through college.”
Billmeier mentioned how he is excited to recruit and work with players at NJIT, as the program has fantastic facilities in place to train to win. He said the arena, practice courts, weight room, locker room, training room and film room are all high-quality facilities.
NJIT is coming off a rough year, however. The Highlanders went 7-23 overall and 4-12 in the America East. However, Billmeier mentioned he is ready to work with the team to revive the program.
“It’s been a crazy few weeks in transition, but really honored to be the head coach at NJIT,” Billmeier said. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us, but we’ve got a lot of really good things in place to help us get this program going in the right direction.”
For more from Billmeier, listen to the full interview here:
Photo Credit: Matt Kipp