What makes Tommy Lloyd’s rapid and unforeseen head coaching ascendance so intriguing is that Mark Few’s coaching tree at Gonzaga had little more than modest success, if that, over 20 years.
Almost no athletic director went searching for a head coach at Gonzaga, and, fortuitously for Arizona, neighborhood rivals Washington and Washington State didn’t give Lloyd a sniff in their coaching changes of the last 10 years.
Lloyd had wrongly been cast as a recruiter, even though Few said in 2014 that Lloyd’s “strength is that he does everything well. That’s what we expect at Gonzaga. You recruit. You coach. You develop and you scout.”
When Lloyd’s name surfaced as a possible replacement for Sean Miller last spring, a prominent UA donor told me that Lloyd “isn’t ready to be a head coach.”
My mistake; I believed him.
After Arizona clinched its 17th Pac-12 basketball championship in a forceful victory at USC Tuesday, Lloyd climbed to a place in Division I basketball history like few of his coaching predecessors.
Do you know how many first-year Power 5 conference head coaches opened 26-3 (or better), were ranked as high as No. 2 in the AP poll and won a league championship?
One.
After 30 years as a North Carolina assistant, Bill Guthridge took over for Hall of Famer Dean Smith in 1997-98. Guthridge, 61, inherited a club that had superstars Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison. Guthridge coached North Carolina to a 27-3 start, was ranked No. 1 for six weeks and finished at the Final Four with a 34-3 record.
He retired two years later.
Lloyd, who is 47 and appears to have the energy of someone 20 years younger, is no Bill Guthridge. He’s just getting started. Put it in this context: Lute Olson was 49 when he was hired at Arizona.
“I’ve been lucky being a part of a program that’s been here a lot (as a league champ),” Lloyd said after Tuesday’s game..
Lucky? Arizona should consider itself in that category if only because Gonzaga hasn’t been viewed as a shopping ground for head coaches.
Arizona president Robert C. Robbins and AD Dave Heeke were intuitive enough to see beyond Lloyd’s misleading “he’s-just-a-good-recruiter” label.
Until last spring, only two of Few’s assistant coaches left his staff to become head coaches: Bill Grier and Ray Giacoletti. Both struggled, which perhaps led search firms and ADs to view Lloyd through a tainted lens.
Grier, now an assistant at Colorado, left Gonzaga in 2007 to be the head coach of the San Diego Toreros. He went 95-130 his last seven seasons and parted ways with the school.
Giacoletti, who had been fired as Utah’s head coach in 2007, replaced Grier at Gonzaga and stayed for seven seasons. He was given a second chance at head coaching, at Drake in 2013, but was again fired. He is now an assistant coach at Saint Louis.
When Lloyd left Gonzaga, his role was filled by Brian Michaelson, who has been on Few’s staff since 2007. Michaelson served as the Zags’ acting head coach earlier this season, when Few was suspended for a summer DUI arrest.
“Brian is really, really good,” Few said then. “He’s just like Tommy. Brian is invested in every aspect of this program. Recruiting, game planning, scouting, everything, development.”
Arizona guard Bennedict Mathurin smiles as his team takes the lead over USC in the first half of Tuesday's game.
During college basketball’s hiring/firing season this spring, expect ADs and search firms to give Michaelson a look. It has now become clear that Lloyd had considerable input with Few, going beyond recruiting, involved in day-to-day operations and strategy.
Lloyd is one of three who seem certain to be considered as college basketball’s coach of the year. His strongest competition will be Wisconsin’s Greg Gard. The Badgers, who clinched the Big Ten championship Tuesday, were generally predicted to finish in the middle of the conference. Also deserving of consideration is Providence’s Ed Cooley, whose 24-4 Friars were 13-13 a year ago.
Don’t expect the humble Lloyd to enter into any conversation about postseason awards, especially those involving him.
“We can celebrate in the offseason, but we still got work to do,” he said after Tuesday’s game. “We’re gonna look to get better and can’t wait to get home and have a great weekend at McKale. I’ve got that coaching disease; we’ve got a game on Thursday. I’ll be watching film of Stanford on the plane home.”
As Arizona gets deeper into March, there are bound to be critics who claim Lloyd inherited a surplus of talent from Miller’s middlin’ 11-9 Pac-12 team of a year ago. That’s way off.
Transfers James Akinjo (Baylor), Jordan Brown (Louisiana-Lafayette), Terrell Brown (Washington) and Jemarl Baker (Fresno State) combined to average 43 points at Arizona last season. At their new schools, Terrell Brown is averaging 21.5, Jordan Brown 15.1 and Akino 13.1. Baker, who is injured and inactive, has only played five games.
That’s a lot to lose from a roster.
Arizona center Oumar Ballo dunks over USC forward Chevez Goodwin during the first half of Tuesday’s title-clinching win.
Yet somehow Lloyd has been able to replace them while rebuilding the culture and implementing entirely new offensive and defensive systems almost without a hitch.
And he’s done so with a smile on his face.
In Tuesday’s game at USC, Lloyd’s three first-year rotation recruits — Oumar Ballo, Justin Kier and Pelle Larsson — combined to shoot 12 for 19 afield, grab 11 rebounds and score 28 points. Without those three, Arizona would’ve had difficulty winning 15 games, and forget about the Pac-12 title.
By 8:30 a.m.,Wednesday, the UA took action to show just how much it means to win a Pac-12 championship. Facilities management personnel climbed to the upper level of McKale Center and carefully painted “2022” on a large mural listing the school’s 17 Pac-12 basketball champions.
They made sure to leave space for No. 18 and beyond.
