Bond between Arizona's Tommy Lloyd, LBSU's Dan Monson won't bend with NCAA Tourney matchup

Sometime after arriving in Salt Lake City on Tuesday evening, Tommy Lloyd and Dan Monson had plans to hang out together, maybe grab something to eat or a beer or whatever. The exact details didn’t matter as much as the time together.

That’s the way it can be with close friends, siblings, cousins, and whatever you call these two affable branches of the Gonzaga coaching tree. Their bond is a decades-long friendship that will underlie a first-round NCAA Tournament game Thursday, when Lloyd’s Arizona Wildcats face Monson’s Long Beach State team at the Delta Center.

Such a game isn’t their preference. Former Zag staffers such as Lloyd, Monson and Boise State coach Leon Rice usually avoid scheduling each other as with, of course, with Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who took over for Monson as the Zags’ head coach in 1999 when Monson left for Minnesota.

Lloyd, in fact, postponed Arizona's contracted December 2021 game at Gonzaga soon after becoming the Wildcats’ coach in April of that year, and the game has still not been played.

“I don't think you guys understand how close we are,” Lloyd said, when reminded of that unfulfilled obligation. “I mean, we're a family. That doesn't mean we're not professionals, not on our own paths. But we're literally a family.

“It's a very unique situation. Our kids are more like cousins than friends. Our wives are best friends. Us coaches have been in the battles together and we’re great friends. The relationships run that deep.”

The only thing is, Monson and Lloyd didn’t grow organically together at Gonzaga, or anywhere else for that matter. Thirteen years older than the 49-year-old Lloyd, Monson never played with him, never coached him or worked with him in any form.

He recruited Lloyd, but only sort of. And he hired Lloyd, but only sort of.

Their relationship grew anyway. It started when Lloyd’s prolific scoring at Walla Walla (Wash.) Community College landed him on a recruiting list that Monson looked over as a Gonzaga assistant in the mid 1990s under then-coach Dan Fitzgerald.

That didn’t go too far.

“Back at the time, Gonzaga was still recruiting juco players, and I had a good year, so they came and looked at me,” Lloyd said. “But good for them: they found somebody better. That’s probably why they did so well.”

Lloyd said Monson told him then to give him a call if he ever did go into coaching someday. It's a line that sometimes is just a polite way to pull away from a prospect.

Except Lloyd took him up on it. He also had an assist from Walla Walla coach Jeff Reinland, who once had a star forward named Jeremy Eaton transfer to Gonzaga, where he became a standout on Monson’s Elite Eight team in 1998.

Reinland “basically said, `I helped you with Jeremy; you gotta do me a favor,” Monson said. “He said, `I’ve got this former player who’s been playing overseas. He’s married. He’s coming back and he needs to get his masters. He wants to be a GA (graduate assistant). Can you help him?’

"I basically promised him a GA position.”

But that didn't initially go anywhere either. Monson said he offered Lloyd the job in the spring of 1998 but Lloyd backed out when another playing opportunity came up. Then Monson left in July 1998 to become Minnesota’s head coach.

When Lloyd came back a year later hoping to still get the Gonzaga job, Few had taken over the Bulldogs. He wasn't certain whether to keep the GA offer on the table.

"He said `What do you know about Tommy?’" Monson said. “I said, `I haven’t really met him but he’s supposed to be a real quiet kid, he’s supposed to be this and that.'

“About a month after he got there, Mark called me back and said, `Well, he’s not quiet and he’s not this and that, but he’s sure a good basketball coach.'”

Twenty years rolled by. Despite never having worked together, Lloyd and Monson grew closer, bonded together by shared connections within the Zag family.

"That's the secret sauce for Gonzaga," Monson says. "You know, it's still a mom-and-pop store. It plays against Apple and Microsoft, but it's still run like it was 25 years ago when I was there.

"It's not a big family, but it's a close family. All our wives are close. Our kids all have a group chat. My kids have never lived in the same town or spent more than a day or two with him, but (Lloyd's son) Liam is one of their best friends."

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On the court, Lloyd and Monson grew. Lloyd developed a niche in player development and international recruiting, eventually becoming Few’s associate head coach before Arizona hired him away in 2021 to replace Sean Miller.

Monson moved on to Minnesota, cleaning up the program after an academic scandal under former coach Clem Haskins and taking the Gophers to the 2005 NCAA Tournament, but resigned under pressure early in the 2006-07 season.

He resurfaced at Long Beach State the following season, leading the Beach to five Big West Conference titles, a berth in the 2012 NCAA Tournament and four NIT appearances before LBSU announced on March 11 that he would not return.

Monson said it was a mutual decision, that he felt his team needed a change after his 17-year run finished with an 18-14 regular-season record this season. But he said he didn't want the decision announced before the Big West Tournament, since that would make it more about him.

Maybe it was about him, maybe it wasn’t, but LBSU swept through UC Riverside, UC Irvine and UC Davis to win the Big West Tournament. It was a journey followed closely, of course, by a particular group of coaches and their families.

In Spokane, the Few household went nuts.

“Mark sent me a video that his wife Marcy did of Mark, my nephew and his oldest son pacing and yelling at the TV during our (championship) game,” Monson said. “I've never seen him show so much emotion.”

The only problem with the win was something the Gonzaga family feared could happen next: LBSU was placed on the 15-seed line and its Southern California location made the Beach a natural to face the second-seeded Wildcats in a West Region pod at Salt Lake City.

Lloyd said he had an idea to avoid this sort of thing: He began talking with Monson after last season about having the LBSU come back to McKale for a nonconference game.

Since NCAA Tournament seeding guidelines aim to avoid rematches of nonconference games in the first and second rounds, Long Beach State would have likely been moved off the 15-seed line or sent to another pod if such a game had happened.

“I remember exactly where I was at when we agreed. I was down in Mexico,” Lloyd said. “Then I get back a couple weeks later, I check in with TJ (Benson, special assistant), `Hey did you get that deal done with Muns, that contract?’

“Without Muns telling me, he canceled it and took someone else. If we had played, we wouldn't have matched up (in the NCAA Tournament) against him. So this is Muns' fault.”

Except there are two sides to this story.

Monson has long been known for for assembling brutal non-conference schedules at Long Beach State, including five appearances at McKale Center during the Miller era, and his teams have beaten enough high-major teams that some of them don't take his calls.

So Monson said he basically was begging Lloyd to take the game.

“That was the first thing he said to me, `It’s your fault we’re playing because if you had followed through (with a regular-season game) they wouldn’t make us play,’" Monson said. “First of all I’d never heard of that. Second, I needed a game, he had a date and he was adamant: `I don’t want to play you, Muns. I don’t like to do the friends thing.'

“I said `Tommy, I need this favor. I need another game and I would rather play somebody that I know won’t run up the score or say something derogatory toward my team at the press conference.’"

Monson said Lloyd finally agreed to play — but only if Monson couldn’t find another game. But Monson did, scheduling a Nov. 11 road game at DePaul, which the Long Beach State ended up winning.

“And now he's pulling the old 'Oh, well we would have played but he didn’t want to play,'" Monson said.

Munson chuckled. He said Lloyd can “slant stuff in a good way,” something he says has helped UA's recruiting, but noted in all seriousness how genuine Lloyd actually is.

“What you see is what you get. Absolutely,” Monson said. “I love Tommy like a brother.”

And brothers do quarrel, after all. But that doesn’t mean the bond has to break.

Especially this one.