![\"Arizona](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/USATSI_28196618.jpg.webp.webp\" "\\"Arizona")
<\/p>\nThe way he tells the story, Tommy Lloyd literally looked himself in the mirror for the conversation of a lifetime. He had been presented an opportunity no one who could accurately be described as a career assistant might have anticipated: head coach at the University of Arizona. And such a position never had been the plan.<\/p>\n
No, the plan was one particular position, and there was no rush to get there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended up in such a stable situation at Gonzaga,\u201d Lloyd told The Sporting News. \u201cI honestly thought I was Bill Guthridge. I thought I was going to be Dean Smith\u2019s loyal guy for all those years, and then Coach Smith is going to retire and Guthridge takes it over for a few years. I thought that was my playbook, and I was totally OK with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyd was Mark Few\u2019s assistant for 20 years at Gonzaga, and he was on board for as many more as the Zags would have him. If the boss coached until age 70, say, Lloyd would be 58 then and could have a nice tenure as Few\u2019s successor, a little like Guthridge taking North Carolina to two Final Fours in three years following Smith\u2019s retirement.<\/p>\n
And then Arizona called.<\/p>\n
And now Lloyd is not replacing Few, but joining him as one of the great coaches to win The Sporting News Coach of the Year award. Lloyd is our selection for the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n
MORE: Sporting News 2026 College Basketball All-America team<\/p>\n
\u201cI honestly was probably more ready than I knew,\u201d Lloyd said, recalling his Arizona origin story. \u201cI didn\u2019t come down here and assume I was going to crush it, by any stretch. I thought, OK, wow, what an opportunity! And I remember looking in the mirror before I took the job, and I said to myself: If you turn down Arizona, you don\u2019t believe in yourself.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd knowing that it\u2019s going to be an incredible challenge. OK, it would be a challenge if I took the head coaching job at Fresno State.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Big 12 was so loaded with elite talent and NCAA title contenders Lloyd called it \u201ca monster.\u201d The Sporting News named six Big 12 players to its 15-player All-America team. The March Madness selection committee placed five of its teams within the top 16 at its annual late-February bracket preview. And in that crucible, Arizona lost only twice in league play by a combined five points. Against outside competition in non-league games, the Wildcats were unbeaten and took out KenPom top-30 teams Florida, Connecticut, Alabama and UCLA.<\/p>\n
The official Big 12 poll of league coaches predicted Arizona to finish No. 4 in the league. They won it by two games. The preseason national AP poll placed the Wildcats at No. 13. They were No. 2 at the close of the regular season, with four first-place votes, and stand as a lock to earn a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a good feeling about it all along, and we weren\u2019t trying to look for extra attention or get extra eyes on it. We wanted to go out and prove it,\u201d Lloyd told SN. \u201cThese guys did that.\u201d<\/p>\n
MORE: SN’s latest March Madness bracket forecast<\/p>\n
Few won The Sporting News Coach of the Year award in the 2016-17 season, when Lloyd was a significant component of the Zags\u2019 first-ever run to the Final Four and NCAA Championship game as a primary recruiter and connection to such overseas talents as Przemek Karnowski and Killian Tillie.<\/p>\n
Now, Lloyd joins his good friend and former boss in an esteemed fraternity that opened in 1964 and has admitted such legends as John Wooden, John Thompson, Jim Calhoun, Mike Krzyzewski and Roy Williams.<\/p>\n
Five years into his time at Arizona, Lloyd has constructed the best career start of any Division I men\u2019s head coach. His 140 victories are the most ever by a coach in his first five seasons, one more to this point than Brad Stevens achieved at Butler.<\/p>\n
Arizona ranks in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency, in the top 15 in points scored and top 50 in points allowed. There is no player averaging even 16 points but seven delivering at least 9 points per game.<\/p>\n
In an era of college sports redefined by NIL payments and instant eligibility for transfers, the Wildcats have a team Lloyd contends \u201cis the same Arizona would have had 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago. The way it was built \u2013 you have some experienced guys that are proven winners and knew what it meant to play for the University of Arizona and loved Tucson, and you had some really talented young guys that are probably going to have a great chance to have careers beyond college. I think that\u2019s a formula Arizona had mastered for a long time, and I feel like we kind of captured that this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are transfers, to be sure. All-America point guard Jaden Bradley spent one year at Alabama, then was looking for something new and found himself in the desert. Tobe Awaka was a reserve on an Elite Eight team at Tennessee and has become a foundational player for the Wildcats, even while coming off the bench. Wing Anthony Dell\u2019Orso transferred up from Campbell, where he averaged 19.5 points in his second season with the Camels.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images <\/p>\n
There have been questions about the potential fragility of a team that starts three freshmen. But the nature of those freshmen has repelled that doubt. Shooting guard Brayden Burries quietly assumed the role of primary offensive option. Massive power forward Koa Peat provides a stability to the frontcourt at both ends. Wing Ivan Kharchenkov is the sort of glue guy a first-year player rarely is fashioned to be, but he suits the role ideally.<\/p>\n
It is a team so intent on achieving together that the solution for an overabundance of potential frontcourt starters was resolved by one player \u2013 Awaka, the most experienced \u2013 volunteering to be the guy who came off the bench.<\/p>\n
Awaka has played 137 career games and started all of last season, but the recruitment of McDonald\u2019s All-American Koa Peat and return from injury of 7-2 Motiejus Krivas presented the Wildcats with this champagne problem: Two big-man spots, three big men.<\/p>\n
\u201cTobe came to us — he\u2019s such a good guy \u2013 and he said to one of our assistant coaches, Jack Murphy, \u2018Who do you think Coach will start?\u2019 Jack said, \u2018I don\u2019t really know; we haven\u2019t talked about it yet,\u2019 \u201d Lloyd told SN. \u201cAnd Tobe said, \u2018Well, if you want my opinion, I think you guys should start Krivas and Koa Peat.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis reasoning was, \u2018Krivas is recovering from an injury and worked really hard to come back, and I think it would be good for his confidence to start. And Koa is a big-time recruit who\u2019s never not started, so he might not know how to acclimate to in that role. Whereas I\u2019ve done it before. For me, it doesn\u2019t matter, as long as I know I\u2019m going to be a contributor.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
DECOURCY: Why expanding the NCAA field is pointless<\/p>\n
Awaka led the Wildcats in rebounding at 9.5 per game though he averaged 21 minutes. He was named the Big 12 Sixth Man of the Year. Peat has averaged 10 points and 5.3 rebounds and shot .548 from the field. Krivas is near a double-double average, at 10.8 points and 8.2 rebounds. It worked because Awaka was willing to sacrifice and his coaches realized he was onto something.<\/p>\n
\u201cResource-wise, we are getting to a place that I think we will be resourced in the upper echelon of college basketball,\u201d Lloyd said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t been up until this point. We don\u2019t need to get into numbers or anything, but we have been judicious, and we\u2019ve been fortunate we made a lot of good decisions on people we\u2019ve taken, and how we handle it on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to be the highest bidder. We want kids to have other reasons to want to come here, so there is still kind of that old college feeling, where you have a connection to the university or the area or they want to play for the coaching staff. Whatever it is. You always want something else to be attached to them coming. And once they\u2019re here, we literally treat it like college basketball\u2019s always been. I\u2019m not coaching any different now than I was 20 years ago. Hopefully I\u2019ve gotten better.\u201d<\/p>\n
A short while after he was hired at Arizona, Lloyd had the chance to sit down with the university president who approved his hiring. Robert Robbins was a cardio-thoracic surgeon at Stanford University Hospital before entering academia. Lloyd expressed his appreciation for the administration taking a risk on a coach whose career record was 0-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe looked at me and was like, \u2018What, are you crazy?\u2019\u201d Lloyd recalled. \u201cHe said, \u2018The best and most talented people I ever worked with were my residents when I was a heart surgeon at Stanford. And so why would it be any different for coaching? I believe in you; you\u2019ve been well-schooled, you were at a program that had incredible values. And I just ask you to bring that stuff down here.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
Lloyd brought Gonzaga concepts and ideals to Tucson, and those international recruiting connections, but he felt it was necessary to close the door entirely on the Zags.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my first couple years, I didn\u2019t watch Gonzaga at all. And it wasn\u2019t anything weird, but I wanted to be intentional and not watching them play and comparing ourselves to them,\u201d Lloyd said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to think like, \u2018Oh, OK, look at that play they just ran. I better put that in.\u2019 I wanted Arizona basketball, once we started what we were going to do, to evolve naturally from within. I didn\u2019t want it to be influenced by me comparing it to something else that I had left.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s our job to compare Lloyd\u2019s work to that done by others. This isn\u2019t the job he he might have expected to hold at this point in his career, but for the 2025-26 season, no one has done the college basketball head coaching thing any better.<\/p>\n
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