On the sort of morning Arizona fans have learned to greet with anxiety — the morning of an Elite Eight game — Tommy Lloyd said he awoke last Saturday initially wondering if the Wildcats would be playing in the Sweet 16 or Elite Eight that night.
“The moment I thought that, I knew we were all right,” he said, “because I knew we weren't making too big of a deal out of this.”
His words broadcast everywhere from the NCAA Tournament interview podium in San Jose last weekend were an on-brand moment for the fifth-year Arizona coach.
This is a coach who sometimes refers to his players as “dudes," and loves to tell them how much he loves them. This is a coach who prefers to wear baseball caps backwards, who has shouted the expletive-inspired version of Bear Down ("BTFD") over the McKale Center microphone and walks out on the arena floor before home games to a Beastie Boys song.
A product of small-town western Washington, Lloyd also has befriended the DJ who rose to fame with Beastie Boys, Mix Master Mike, sponging so much knowledge from him during a visit to his Las Vegas home that Lloyd even jokingly created a DJ alter-ego known as Tomm-E.
He’s a dude, too.
But while Lloyd’s down-to-earth manner, and calm, composed exterior might have helped the Wildcats settle down and get past that tension-filled Elite Eight round last weekend, despite trailing Purdue by seven at halftime, there's more to his makeup than that.
Arizona Wildcats head coach Tommy Lloyd is surrounded by his players after the Wildcats clinch the Big 12-title after defeating Iowa State at McKale Center on March 2, 2026.
Underneath, say people who know and play for Lloyd, there's a fiery competitiveness, too. Together, those forces result in an unusual fire-and-ice leadership that might be the one reason why the Wildcats are 36-2 and in the Final Four.
"You look at Sean Miller, Tommy Lloyd and Lute Olson, and Tommy's right there in the middle," said veteran UA athletic trainer Justin Kokoskie, who has worked with all three coaches. "He's got the cool calmness of Lute Olson but also that fiery edge that Sean has. Tommy's kind of the perfect match."
It was a combination Jeff Reinland started to see over three decades ago, when Lloyd joined his Kelso (Wash.) High School team as a sophomore.
“He was a ferocious competitor. I could count on him every day in practice, every day in the off season — and Tommy's always been good with people, good with teammates and fun to be around," Reinland said. “To know when to pour it on and when to back off, that's a rare quality, and I think Tommy has the ability and skill to know what buttons to push.”
When Lloyd and Reinland both moved on to Walla Walla CC, Reinland watched Lloyd make his job easier. Stlll young and fiery himself, Reinland said Lloyd became a buffer between Reinland and his players.
“He could get fired up, and I would get fired up a little bit as a coach,” Reinland said. “But Tommy was always a voice saying, 'Hey guys, we're OK. Let's go. Let's get this done.'
“I think Tommy knew how to take what I was saying and help players who might struggle with that a little bit. He would help them understand, 'Listen to what he's telling you, not how he's telling you.' He’s always been really good with that.”
The same kind of thing happens today.
Another one of the well-broadcast stories Lloyd told after UA's Elite Eight win over Purdue last Saturday was of him leaving his players alone for part of halftime, letting them stew over and try to solve the problems that led to their seven-point deficit.
Reinland loved that one.
“I was so impressed by that because at the end of the day, the players are the ones that have to pull it together out there,” Reinland said. “Certainly, the coach is extremely important, but Tommy knows how to treat people, and he’s a student of the game, as well. I think he studies the game probably much more than anybody I've ever known.”
The Wildcats wound up beating Purdue 79-64 to lift themselves into a national semifinal game Saturday against Michigan, and Lloyd said afterward, predictably, that he just wanted them to stay steady, get back in the game, and have a chance to pull out a win in the final four minutes.
They figured it out, as Lloyd likes to say. Lloyd said he's left his players alone to figure it out our or five times already this season, and that it's worked every time.
Then he spoke of exactly what Reinland is talking about.
“The most powerful thing in a team sport is a player-led program,” Lloyd said. “The coach, you have to help them navigate it, but when you can get the players to own these moments, you are just so much better. You are so much better.”
The players owned it, and afterward they reveled in it, wearing pieces of the SAP Center net in their Final Four hats, and T-shirts soaked from water showers.
But while doing so, several of them also credited Lloyd and his staff with the assist.
Arizona guard Brayden Burries and head coach Tommy Lloyd are left with questions after the Wildcats picked up a foul against Arizona State during the second half of their Big 12 game, Jan. 14, 2026, in Tucson.
“We’ve got a great coach with Tommy Lloyd and a great coaching staff,” freshman guard Brayden Burries said that evening. “They were down but they weren’t crazy over it. There were no nerves. They just told us, 'Be steady. These games are long. Timeouts are longer.' So it was just trying to take it possession by possession.”
Two nights earlier, in Arizona's 109-88 win over Arkansas in the Sweet 16, Lloyd had a different challenge in keeping his guys level: The Razorbacks, without a defense that could stop the Wildcats, went after them physically, committing two technical and two flagrant fouls, one of which resulted in an ejection.
The Wildcats did not take the bait. Arizona had occasionally struggled with technical fouls earlier in the season, mostly for excessive celebrations, but this time committed no major fouls and won easily.
“When we play the game, we just try to play basketball and are not trying to get into those things like other teams do,” center Motiejus Krivas said after the Arkansas game. “It just shows what type of team we are, our character, what type of persons we have, to not get into stuff.”
Like many college teams, the Wildcats essentially have been reflecting their coach's style.
Senior wing Anthony Dell'Orso said Lloyd is one of the calmest, most under-control coaches at his level.
“He tries to stay level headed,” Dell'Orso said. “I think he understands that we feed off that a little bit. When we see him calm, it calms us a little."
Earlier this season, Dell'Orso saw it on a personal basis. Throughout a midseason shooting slump, Lloyd encouraged him privately and told media he was certain Dell'Orso would pull out of it and play a big role when the Wildcats needed him to.
Then, just when the Wildcats were playing without forwards Koa Peat (leg injury) and Dwayne Aristode (illness) in late February, Dell'Orso put up two straight season-high games of 22 points in UA wins against BYU and Houston.
“He builds everyone’s confidence up,” Dell'Orso said. “Tommy does a great job of building confidence in players, staying with them, and if it's going great, he keeps it level. Doesn't get down, doesn't get too high."
Lloyd graduated with a degree in biology at Whitman, and has joked about how he wasn’t smart enough to become a doctor like many of his peers at the prestigious liberal arts school.
But maybe at Whitman, or while playing for Reinland, or while spending two decades coaching at Gonzaga under coach Mark Few, Lloyd picked up some psychology, too.
Dell'Orso indicated Lloyd is good at driving players hard in practice to make them better, but flips it positively during games to build confidence.
“He always tricks you into thinking you're doing really well, and it helps you do well," Dell'Orso says. "And when it’s not going so well, he's really good at getting you back up.”
He’s calm. They’re calm.
He's competitive. They're competitive.
That’s the deal, as Lloyd also likes to say.
“Tommy builds culture. Culture. Culture,” Kokoskie says. “That's what wins."
