Arizona confirmed Monday that associate head coach Jack Murphy will be retained on Tommy Lloyd’s new staff.
Murphy, 41, had been expected to remain with the Wildcats since he has both longtime UA roots and a previous relationship with Lloyd, who was named the Wildcats’ new head coach on April 14. Murphy also has significant experience in recruiting internationally, a strong point that Lloyd developed while serving as an assistant coach at Gonzaga over the past two decades.
Murphy served as interim head coach in the week after Sean Miller was fired on April 7, and has assisted in the recruitment of Gilbert Perry High school’s Dylan Anderson, who committed to the Wildcats on April 16.
Murphy, who left his job as NAU’s head coach in June 2019 to become UA’s associate head coach, earned $335,000 last season as part of a two-year contract set to expire this month.
“There isn't another school in the country my wife and I would leave NAU for," Murphy said in a 2019 statement upon his hiring at UA. " Being an Arizona Wildcat, it's in the fabric of who you are always."
It remains unclear if either of Miller’s two other assistants, Jason Terry and Danny Peters, will stay.
Both Terry and Peters have contracts through April 2022 that will pay them through next season regardless, Terry for $280,000 and Peters for $275,000. However, if they accept another coaching job, their contracts stipulate that the full amount of their new salaries will offset the amounts that UA owes them.
