Jack Murphy, other U of A assistants take over while Tommy Lloyd leads USA's U19 team

To Arizona associate head coach Jack Murphy, now is the perfect time of year to get players back in a rhythm.

“Class, the weight room, workouts on the floor,” Murphy says. “Kind of to get integrated to our system.”

It’s also the time of year when recruiting evaluation gets heavy, at the scholastic Section 7 event last weekend and the club ball events to come.

Yet Arizona’s head coach is gone for nearly a month. First, Tommy Lloyd spent two weeks in Colorado. Now he’s headed to Europe for roughly two weeks.

But at worst, it’s a zero-sum situation for the Arizona program: Lloyd is gone because he’s leading USA Basketball’s top junior national team, after all, so any time he misses with his current or prospective future players is offset by the prestige, connections and recruiting cred he’ll gain from what he’s doing now.

“Everybody has a good idea of what he’s doing and why, and where he’s at,” Murphy said. “I don’t think anybody’s faulting him at all.”

Not only could Lloyd’s journey to the FIBA U19 World Cup benefit him in the years ahead, but it might also help his staff grow. Before he left for USA’s training camp earlier this month, Lloyd paved the way for Murphy and his other assistants to temporarily take over this summer.

“He actually did a great thing for me, Ken (Nakagawa), TJ (Benson), Brandon (Chappell), all of us, because he allowed us to kind of run the workouts even though he was there,” Murphy said. “So that way, there’s been an easy transition to when he’s gone. We’re just the ones running the workouts.”

The Arizona staff had a similar challenge last summer, when Lloyd left to coach a USA junior team in the U18 AmeriCup in Argentina, a qualifier for this year’s U19 World Cup. That tournament was held in early June, before most UA players had shown up, though Murphy said the remaining staffers still ran some workouts in Lloyd’s absence.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

This time, Murphy said, about seven to nine players already have been around this month. Murphy said forward Koa Peat checked in for a week or so before going to the U19 camp himself, while fellow incoming freshmen Brayden Burries, Dwayne Aristode, Bryce James and Mabil Mawut also arrived.

Returnees Jaden Bradley, Motiejus Krivas, Tobe Awaka, Anthony Dell’Orso and Addison Arnold have been around, too, as has Tucson native Evan Nelson, who is grad-transferring from Harvard. (Of the other incoming freshmen, Sidi Gueye remains overseas while Ivan Kharchenkov is still playing in the German playoffs, and is expected to join the German U19 team for the World Cup).

It hasn’t been a difficult group to work with for a number of reasons, the way Murphy put it.

“Coach Lloyd is amazing because he gives us a lot of freedom throughout the year,” Murphy said. “In practice, he’ll allow me to run a drill or have a voice, so now it’s just like old hat, and it’s really beneficial to have veterans like Jaden Bradley, Anthony Dell’Orso or Tobe or Mo, because they’ve been in the program.

“Those guys know what we’re doing. When we’re going drill-to-drill, or we’re hopping in between concepts, they’ve done it before, and they can kind of be extra coaches on the floor.”

Murphy’s been around, too, of course. Not only has he worked under Lute Olson, Sean Miller and Lloyd at Arizona, but he was also NAU’s head coach for seven seasons.

That’s why Lloyd says he isn’t worried about leaving, either.

“I’ve obviously got a great staff, and we know Jack’s so seasoned and experienced that Jack’s able to kind of run the show,” Lloyd said after a recent practice in Colorado Springs, then grinned and added: “You know, he runs the show a lot of times when I’m there, too.”