Greg Hansen: Tommy Lloyd wins — again — with fast-pace style, willingness to learn | Subscriber

It took three seconds for Bennedict Mathurin to grab the opening tipoff and do his best Usain Bolt straight to the Arizona bucket. Two-hand dunk.

Game over, right? More or less.

With that, Cal coach Mark Fox jumped to his feet, held his palms outstretched, and glared at the Cal bench with a bewildered expression that said “Didn’t I warn you about that all day, you dummies!?”

Arizona’s 89-61 Senior Day victory over the Bears was in doubt for about three seconds. Tommy Lloyd inserted freshman guard Adama Bal into the game with 15:01 left in the first half. The last time Bal played in the first half was in the Red-Blue Game.

If nothing else, Saturday’s game was a compelling look at the coaching styles of Lloyd and Fox, two contradictory coaching personalities, each with opposite ways to attack the same game.

Fox prefers slow-and-go. Lloyd prefers go-go-go.

Fox, wearing a black business suit, coaching his 553rd game as a head coach, never took a seat after the first three seconds. He spent half the time coaching, half the time shouting at referees Verne Harris and Deron White. None of it worked.

Lloyd, wearing casual Nike gear, coaching his 31st game, kept his seat warm, occasionally rising to offer up-close instruction to one of the Wildcats. The most animated he became was to turn to the crowd with 16 minutes remaining, imploring them to stand and cheer. Arizona’s lead was “only” 52-37.

You almost expected Lloyd to grab the microphone and sing along with “We Are The Champions” in the post-game net-cutting celebration.

The Lloyd of 2022 is somewhat like the Fox of 2005, a period in which Fox emerged as one of America’s leading young college basketball coaches, guiding Nevada to four consecutive Mountain West Conference championships, going 123-43 overall and earning him nine seasons and about $25 million at Georgia, which he sadly discovered is not a basketball school. Fox didn’t win an NCAA Tournament game in those nine seasons and was fired.

Now he’s a bounce-back coach in the Pac-12, an act that failed miserably for the last two recycled head coaches in the league: Washington State’s Ernie Kent and USC’s Kevin O’Neill. Fox may be the man to break that streak.

The one thing Lloyd and Fox did similarly Saturday was to bring one of their mentors to McKale Center, a tribute to the success they’ve enjoyed.

Fox had former Kansas State and Pepperdine head coach Tom Asbury sitting behind the Cal bench; Fox coached for Asbury at K-State for seven years. Fox employs one of Asbury’s top assistants from Pepperdine, Marty Wilson, as his shoulder-to-lean-on assistant at Cal.

030622-tuc-spt-hansencol-p2 — Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd has words with one of the game officials early in Saturday's win over Cal.
Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

Lloyd brought David Blatt to Tucson for the weekend. Blatt is known in America for coaching the Cleveland Cavaliers to the 2015 NBA Finals, but globally is one of the most accomplished coaches in EuroLeague history, coaching in Russia, Turkey, Greece, Israel and Italy. Lloyd built his basketball reputation through European recruiting; he was smart enough to tap into Blatt’s knowledge along the way and establish such a mentor-student relationship that Blatt, who has been slowed by multiple sclerosis, still chose to fly to Tucson to talk hoops with Lloyd.

That type of on-the-job education is what undeniably has been a big part of Lloyd’s readiness to coach Arizona to the Pac-12 championship and the nation’s No. 2 ranking. He puts so much value on insight and experience from older coaches that it sets him apart from his peers.

For example, two weeks ago Lloyd’s guest was former Gonzaga baseball coach and associate athletic director Steve Hertz, who flew to Tucson to spend the week with Lloyd. Hertz might know much basketball, but he knows coaching and how to relate to 20-year-old athletes and Lloyd is a sponge in such situations.

That’s why you see 63-year-old Steve Robinson on Arizona’s bench rather than a crew of younger assistants — yes men — as many coaches prefer. Robinson coached 27 years under Kansas and North Carolina Hall of Famer Roy Williams and was also the head coach at Florida State and Tulsa.

He’s seen what Lloyd hasn’t seen. What a valuable font of knowledge for any team, in any league. Lloyd has something of a photographic memory, which serves him well not just from a 21-year period as Mark Few’s assistant at Gonzaga, but in all aspects of coaching.

A few weeks ago, former Amphi High School basketball coach Pat Derksen attended Lloyd’s weekly radio show at Union Public House. Ever engaging, Lloyd randomly introduced himself to Derksen, who is the father of Arizona’s 2012 Gatorade Player of the Year Tim Derksen, who went on to be a starter for the San Francisco Dons, one of Gonzaga’s top rivals in the West Coast Conference.

When Pat told him he was Tim’s father, Lloyd smiled and nodded.

“Tim Derksen,” he said. “Don’t let him go left.”

Lloyd hadn’t coached against Derksen since 2016, but he still remembered the scouting report from those old Gonzaga-USF games.

If the Pac-12 is fortunate, Fox will rebuild Cal back to the kind of relevance it enjoyed under Mike Montgomery. The league is starving for another Top 25 program.

An enduring Tommy Lloyd-Mark Fox rivalry would create a lot of future suspense beyond the opening tipoff.