Arizona Wildcats add three men's basketball support staffers with ties to Gonzaga

While Tommy Lloyd kept Arizona alums Jack Murphy and Jason Terry on his coaching staff, he's adding a Gonzaga flavor to his  support staff.

Arizona announced that Lloyd has hired TJ Benson as a special assistant to Lloyd and recruiting coordinator, Ken Nakagawa as the new director of advanced scouting and Rem Bakamus as director of player development.

All three positions do not allow for on-floor coaching but are typically held by aspiring coaches. Benson's role is effectively what was known and what was advertised by UA as the director of basketball operations, a role that is often but not always occupied by an aspiring coach.

The three hires will essentially replace operations director Ryan Reynolds, on-campus/analytics director David Miller and student-athlete development director Anthony Richards. However, Reynolds will remain at UA in an assistant AD role.

Gonzaga's coordinator of basketball administration last season, Benson was a former assistant coach at Grand Canyon, where his younger brother Casey transferred after having helped Oregon reach the 2017 Final Four.

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TJ Benson played at Mesa Community College, Weber State and GCU, graduating from Weber State in 2009. He served as an assistant director of basketball operations at Boise State in 2011-12 before spending the next seven at GCU as operations director and assistant coach.

Nakagawa was a graduate assistant at Gonzaga for two seasons before spending the last three as the Zags' video coordinator. He is a 2016 graduate of Long Beach State, where he served as a manager and graduate assistant under head coach Dan Monson, the former Gonzaga head coach.

Bakamus was a walk-on player at Gonzaga who graduated in 2017 and spent the past three seasons as a graduate assistant at Baylor. Not surprisingly, Bakamus expressed mixed emotions over facing the Zags in the championship game last season.

"It’s unique. It’s weird. It feels right, but not right in a sense," Bakamus told KREM. "I just have so much love for Gonzaga. I obviously wouldn’t be where I’m at today without my experiences there and my coaches there and my teammates there. I’ve just been blessed."

Bakamus also goes back with Lloyd a long time. In a story for the Daily News of Longview, Wash., Bakamus said that his father coached against Lloyd when Lloyd was a high school star.