Like many new Arizona men’s basketball hires, Ricky Fois has a strong connection to head coach Tommy Lloyd.
Theirs is rooted in the depths of basketball geekiness.
“Those FIBA U16 European games at, like, 6 a.m. on the YouTube channel?” Fois says. “There would be seven people logged on and two of them were in Spokane, Washington.”
Of course, those two would be Lloyd, then a Zags assistant with a nose for international recruiting, and Fois, an Italian citizen who served as a graduate assistant for Pepperdine before wedging in the Gonzaga door thanks to Lloyd’s urging in 2014.
But there’s more behind Fois’ official arrival this month as an Arizona assistant basketball coach. There’s also the way he absorbed, as a teenager, the once-weekly college basketball games that were beamed into Italy, and described by a gifted Italian broadcaster who told stories that captivated Fois.
Those made Riccardo Fois a fan of Gonzaga and Arizona, too.
“I remember Gonzaga because that’s an Italian name, so that was easy,” Fois said. “And I remember Arizona because they had Salim Stoudamire. I used to love Salim Stoudamire. As a matter of fact, I might have a jersey of Arizona from that day with his number, somewhere in Italy.”
But even if he doesn’t, Fois now has plenty of his own Arizona basketball gear. More than 16 years after Stoudamire left Arizona as the program’s alltime leading 3-point maker (342), Fois was hired to help develop a new generation of Wildcats as an assistant coach.
He’ll be doing so not only with the experience of five years with Lloyd and Gonzaga coach Mark Few at Gonzaga but also after spending the last two with the rapidly progressing Phoenix Suns, as the NBA club’s director of player development.
Of course, there’s a historically happy coincidence there, too.
“My favorite NBA team ever is Phoenix Suns with Steve Nash and (coach) Mike D’Antoni,” Fois said. “It was such a European team to watch. I loved it. Then I ended up working for Phoenix Suns and probably the only college jersey I ever had was an Arizona college jersey, and now I’m here.”
At age 34, Fois’ basketball worlds have already collided several times. Here’s how he described his journey so far:
A native of Olbia, Italy, Fois played for his country’s U16 team along with future NBA players such as Danilo Gallinari and Luigi Datome. Fois said wanted to try the college basketball route, so he signed up for a high school foreign exchange program and was sent to Boaz, Alabama.
“You pick a zone. You don’t pick where you’re going and mine was the East Coast — Southeast, I guess — and they sent me to Alabama. Obviously, it was a little bit of a shock for an Italian who was 16 years old but then it ended up being great because I met great people. It was a really, really great experience.”
While in Alabama, Fois was accepted to Pepperdine, joining the program as a walk-on in 2007-08. After one year, he returned to Italy and played two seasons for Italian third-tier clubs. Fois returned to Pepperdine in 2012 and re-joined the program as a graduate assistant.
“Then it was an idea in my career that I wasn’t good enough to play with my friends that I grew up with. They were playing in the NBA and Euro League, and I’m playing in the third division. So I was like, ‘All right. I can do better.’ I like coaching, so I emailed my coach at Pepperdine (Marty Wilson) who was an assistant when I was there and became the head coach. I asked if I could join as a GA and he was great and gave me the opportunity.”
After two years at Pepperdine, Fois started talking to an NBA club about a possible job. He spent the summer of 2014 roaming around Las Vegas and Europe while scouting teenage prospects for that team. That job didn’t pan out, but Fois’ scouting efforts weren’t wasted — because that’s when he bonded with Lloyd.
“In September, they told me they were going to hire somebody else, so I called Tommy, and he told me to come up to Gonzaga, stay there and see if I liked it. I met him the year before at the Final Four when we were just talking international basketball. And then we ended up at U18 (the 2014 European Championships) in Turkey. We were in Konya, which is not an easy place to get to, just 12 Westerners — NBA scouts, some college scouts and Tommy was there. We knew each other already, so we talked and became more friends.”
Over his five years at Gonzaga, Fois worked his way up to become the Zags’ coordinator of basketball analytics and video operations, all while Lloyd continued to serve as an assistant coach. Among other highlights, the two reached the 2017 Final Four in Phoenix with the Zags.
“It’s not a secret that there is a special environment at Gonzaga. This is one of the reasons there’s so much success and why people never left. And working with him obviously we went through international guys, made contacts, and we went through a lot of winning. The basketball talk between me, him and coach (Mark) Few was kind of how the relationship developed.
“We always had international players. So Tommy was always going Europe and it was kind of like vicariously living through him. When I went back to Europe in summer to visit my family, he would come with me. Another year, I was coaching in the European championships in Tel Aviv. Tommy’s been to Tel Aviv dozens of times so he’s telling me all the places to go and it was very natural. We like the same things. We have the same passions.
“(Since) I am in Italian living in the U.S. it’s kind of like Gonzaga became my second family and Tommy became my second family. In those five years, we created a really strong bond and a really strong vision on how we see culture and how we see basketball.”
Fois wasn’t allowed to recruit or coach on the floor with player at Gonzaga, but said he often would train with players after they finished and were preparing for the pros. Then, over the past two years with the Suns, he began to work with players on the court, often incorporating knowledge of analytics and video study. With Fois on staff, the Suns went 8-0 in the 2020 “bubble” games at Orlando in 2020, then made it all the way to the NBA finals last season.
“When we were down in the bubble, it was heartbreaking — we thought we were gonna make the playoffs. I remember like a week after we came back from Orlando, we had like 11 guys all working out and they didn’t even know when the new season was starting. You see that and then you add another great player like Chris Paul and put all those things together, that’s the recipe for success: A lot of guys that believe in what they’re doing and work their butt off.”
While Fois said former Arizona center Deandre Ayton wasn’t one of the main players he was assigned to work with, he said he saw Ayton’s growth up close.
“He knows there is a lot more he can still do. He gets judged because he gets drafted (first in 2018) to a team that wasn’t that good and then there is (Luka) Doncic and Trae Young (from the same draft) but at the end of the day, he’s in the NBA finals and he’s one of the main players.
“Obviously (it helps) having Chris and having Book (Devin Booker) with him. I think he really enjoys that. I think he embraced having great players on his teams and he respects them so much. That helped him raise his level. ... You can tell how much he loves it. He’s such a sweet guy and he has such a great heart and he really embraces the places that have become his family — obviously, Arizona and now the Suns.”
The Suns’ long run, and subsequent delays in transferring over his work visa, kept Fois from recruiting or coaching over the summer. But he has experience with Lloyd’s system and, really, what may have been harder than the delay was simply leaving the Suns.
“It was kind of like the perfect storm. I would have never left the Suns for any college job, or for any other NBA team, but it was Tommy, and it was Arizona, in my opinion one of the top five best jobs in college basketball. It was really hard because with the Suns we had an unbelievable culture and a family environment and we kind of all grow together, as a staff and the players, and had incredible success. But I thought it was the right thing to do.”
