Ex-Gonzaga staffer, KU player Evan Manning Arizona's basketball's new operations director

Former Kansas player and Gonzaga staffer Evan Manning was officially announced as Arizona’s director of basketball operations Tuesday while the Wildcats filled out their 2023-24 staff.

The son of Kansas legend Danny Manning, Evan Manning is an addition to the Wildcats’ staff. Arizona already has had TJ Benson in the role of “special assistant,” where he has been serving many typical director of operations duties, including scheduling.

The NCAA is allowing basketball teams two extra coaches to serve on the court starting this season, up from three assistants and a head coach, but Arizona has not said what other staffers will also have floor coaching responsibilities in 2023-24.

Arizona’s three full-time assistants remain Jack Murphy, Steve Robinson and Riccardo Fois. The Wildcats’ men’s basketball website lists 10 other staffers working with head coach Tommy Lloyd, including athletic trainer Justin Kokoskie and performance enhancement director Chris Rounds, who are also technically part of other areas of the athletic department.

Manning was a walk-on player at Kansas from 2012-16 and began his career as director of player development at Wake Forest from 2017-20 at Wake Forest, where his father was head coach. After Danny Manning was fired at Wake Forest in 2020, Evan Manning became a graduate assistant at Gonzaga for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. He spent last season as an assistant coach at Army, which fired coach Jimmy Allen in March.

Seven of the 13 staffers now listed on the UA website under Lloyd have ties to Gonzaga, where Lloyd served for 21 years.

Meanwhile, Arizona has also added Chris Richards to its program as manager of men’s basketball creative media.

Also, while a report in Israel’s Ynetnews on Sunday reported that former Cavaliers coach David Blatt would be leaving Maccabi Tel Aviv and joining UA as a “professional consultant,” UA says Blatt is not being added to the staff. However, Blatt has a relationship with Lloyd, who said he is close to Blatt and considers him a mentor, and Blatt has been seen at a handful of UA events over Lloyd’s UA tenure.

Schedule almost set

After adding home games against Belmont (Nov. 17), Texas-Arlington (Nov. 19) and Colgate (Dec. 2), Arizona has just one home game to finalize before completing its 2023-24 nonconference schedule.

The Wildcats have already been scheduled to host Morgan State (Nov. 6) and Wisconsin (Dec. 9), while they will play at Duke (Nov. 10) and Southern (Nov. 12) during an early-season swing to North Carolina and Louisiana. They also have three neutral or semi-neutral site games planned: Against Michigan State at Thousand Palms, Calif., on Nov. 23, against Purdue on Dec. 16 at Indianapolis and against Alabama on Dec. 20 at Phoenix.

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The Texas-Arlington game is technically an unbracketed add-on to the unnamed “multi-team event” that includes the Arizona-Michigan State game.

The Wildcats’ Pac-12 games have not been announced yet but are not expected to begin until after Christmas, since the college basketball calendar skews later this season.

Athletic ranks Arizona No. 8

After saying it reviewed video of the many college basketball teams who held foreign exhibition tours this summer, the Athletic put Arizona at No. 8 in its national rankings. The Wildcats have more commonly been ranked in the 10-20 range in early projections.

“Their defense and team speed got a lot better with the addition of transfers Keshad Johnson, Jaden Bradley and Caleb Love along with incoming freshman K.J. Lewis,” the Athletic wrote. “Johnson has received rave reviews from the coaching staff and should really benefit offensively from Arizona’s pace. He’s a matchup problem with his quickness at the four.

“We’re also betting on Lloyd to rein in Love and for his efficiency to go up.”

Heeke: Fans will adapt to Big 12

If Arizona has a rougher conference road ahead in the Big 12 starting in 2024-25, AD Dave Heeke indicate fans will roll with it.

“We’ve got really knowledgeable, great basketball fans,” Heeke said in a recent interview with the Star. “They know what’s going on. I think it’s a benefit for us to be in a high-level, high-performance, the very best basketball league in this country without question. That’s good for Arizona basketball, one of the premier programs.

“It’s gonna be a battle every single night. There’s no night off at all in that league. But this is a great basketball league that we’re in in the Pac-12. We’ll be able to (adapt).”

— Star reporter Michael Lev contributed to this report.