Maybe as much as new UA coach Tommy Lloyd’s imprint has been visible on the floor already, so will his recruiting style be noticeable when the fall signing period begins Wednesday.
The Wildcats are expected to sign only one player in the fall signing period, Gilbert Perry High School big man Dylan Anderson, after being known to offer only four domestic players in the high school class of 2022.
That’s after they turned over roughly half of their 13-player roster each of the past several years under former coach Sean Miller, and after the new one-time transfer waiver led to even more fluidity throughout college basketball last spring.
Lloyd’s philosophy more closely mirrors that of Gonzaga, where he was an assistant for 20 seasons, instead of a wider-net approach that helped Miller build Top 10 classes annually throughout most of his 12-year tenure.
“We were recruiting at a really high level at Gonzaga and selective with the guys who we went after,” Lloyd said. “I’ve decided to take the same approach at Arizona to start out and, to be honest, my first priority was (the current UA players). I didn’t want to come in and have them think, ‘Oh, he’s gonna clean house.’ I thought the best thing I could do for this program, for myself and them was to do a great job with them.”
There are additional reasons for Lloyd to take a selective approach. Among them:
The vast majority of players might return in 2022-23. That may be hard to believe in the free-agent era that is college basketball now, where anybody can get a one-time transfer waiver to play immediately anywhere else, and when sophomore forwards Bennedict Mathurin and Azuolas Tubelis are already projected in the 2022 NBA Draft.
But only one UA player will run out of eligibility next spring, super senior guard Justin Kier. Senior Kim Aiken is entering his fourth season but he, like all players who participated in the COVID-19-plagued 2020-21 season, will get an extra year of eligibility if he wants it.
In addition, the current Wildcats have expressed nearly universal appreciation for Lloyd and his style, suggesting they could be more likely to stick around. Lloyd’s more uptempo scheme also should lead to more opportunities and stats across the board, potentially keeping players (and their families) happier.
All that suggests the Wildcats might need to replace only between two and four players, plus the 13th spot that was not filled this season.
“You might not lose hardly anybody, for sure,” Lloyd said Monday. “And I’m not in the business of cutting guys before they’ve played a game. So I want to I want to see how it plays out a little bit.”
They are bracing for scholarship losses anyway. The Wildcats’ still-pending NCAA case is widely expected to bring at least some recruiting and scholarship restrictions in the future, as Lloyd has made note of repeatedly.
Oklahoma State’s recently finalized infractions case, which stemmed from a former assistant who admitted to taking a comparable amount of bribes as ex-UA assistant coach Book Richardson, resulted in the loss of three scholarships for each of the next three seasons.
Players already on scholarship won’t lose them, but the potential of future limitations means Lloyd can’t risk offering scholarships to players he isn’t wild about. If they leave early for the pros or because they are disgruntled, he may not be able to replace them.
They’re globalized. Lloyd might have only offered four domestic players, but there are international recruits in the high school class of 2022 that are also firmly on the Wildcats’ radar.
It’s just that international recruits often stay under the radar until the last minute, since any publicity could further complicate the battles college coaches often have with pro clubs and/or national team programs that want to keep their players close to home.
Lloyd has made it clear that international players will continue to be a big part of Arizona’s program, as they were at Gonzaga. The Wildcats currently have double the amount international scholarship players (eight) as domestic players, though that is in large part because Miller went heavy with global recruiting during the FBI and NCAA investigations.
“It’s no secret that I love international recruiting and I love international basketball,” Lloyd said. “More than recruiting, it’s actually impacted me as a coach. … I spent a lot of time studying (international) coaches when I watch basketball on my own.
“But I also understand at Arizona you have to have a balance. We have eight international guys right now and I’m happy we have every one of them. I don’t know if we’re always going to have an eight-to-four ratio. That might flip eventually. But at the end of the day, it’s about finding the right guy at the right time, whether it’s an international guy, a high school kid, a transfer. You’ve got to be flexible.”
The NCAA transfer portal is a two-way street. As last spring showed, the transfer portal can give back what it takes away. The Wildcats lost all-conference guard James Akinjo (Baylor) and starting off-guard Jemarl Baker (Fresno State) as well as key reserves Jordan Brown (Louisiana-Lafayette), Terrell Brown (Washington) and Ira Lee (George Washington), but brought in starting guards from Utah (Pelle Larsson) and Georgia (Justin Kier), plus an all-Big Sky forward (Kim Aiken) and a big-bodied 7-footer from Gonzaga (Oumar Ballo).
Who knows who might become available next spring? Most likely, there will be some players already with connections to Arizona or Lloyd from previous recruitments, giving UA an edge in what are typically quick transfer decisions.
“College basketball recruiting has changed immensely,” Lloyd said. “You’re able to get transfers that are able to play right away. That’s never happened before … so I think you need to be opportunistic in this day and age.”
Coach Tommy Lloyd has said freshman Adama Bal has long-term potential.
Lloyd isn’t overlooking the current guys. Even when you miss on some key recruits, Lloyd says, sometimes the best ones wind up being the ones you do sign that stick around to develop.
Lloyd has cited freshmen reserves Shane Nowell, who signed under Miller and then ultimately decided to play for Lloyd, and Adama Bal, a spring signee from Paris, as players who both have big long-term potential. It’s possible Ballo will develop into a consistent force inside.
“We spend a lot of time individually trying to get their games better,” Lloyd said. “I definitely want to continue to do that because I think it’s the right way to do it. It’s not to say you’re not going to be out there trying to recruit really good players. It’s definitely going to be a combination of the player development aspect and hopefully recruiting really talented kids who can impact right away.”
Those dark NCAA clouds still haven’t cleared. In what has been something of an elephant at McKale Center, the Wildcats’ overall recruiting has slipped notably since the FBI made public in 2017 an investigation that led to the school’s still-pending NCAA infractions case.
Even the Wildcats’ much-ballyhooed 2019 class came together in part only because standouts Nico Mannion and Josh Green had family in Phoenix, while Miller had to hustle to pull in highly regarded international players such as Azuolas Tubelis of Lithuania and Kerr Kriisa of Estonia in the spring of 2020 so he could field a competitive roster last season.
Among 2022 players, Anderson committed to the Wildcats in April but Arizona lost out on two other players it offered — Shaedon Sharpe (Kentucky) and Jaden Bradley (Alabama) — and stopped recruiting a third, forward Collin Chandler.
“Have I felt like kids are just beating down our doors to come here? Not quite yet,” Lloyd said during Pac-12 media day last month. “I think we’ve still got to get through the NCAA stuff. All that stuff’s got to kind of shake out.”
UA’s infractions case now sits in the hands of the Independent Accountability Resolution Process, which issued UA an updated Notice of Allegations last month but still has no timetable to issue a ruling.
That means the Wildcats still don’t know if their self-imposed postseason ban last season will be enough or not. And they may not know for at least several more months.
“The NCAA issues that are still lingering and there’s lots of things that factor into recruiting,” Lloyd said. “I want this program to be solidified and locked and loaded, and when the runways clear for us to take off, I want to be ready to take off.
“That’s been my mindset the whole time. I haven’t been sitting here worrying about what happened yesterday or what’s going on right at this second. I’ve always tried to be forward-thinking with it. So I feel good where we’re at. I really do.”
