SAN JOSE, Calif. — The confetti having fallen, the celebration very much ongoing, and here’s the guy responsible for most all of this just off to the side, somehow, by himself.
Here stands Tommy Lloyd — steps away from the risers, blue-and-red shreds of soft, celebratory paper at his feet; and no doubt more underneath his cotton, black Cats quarter-zip — just hanging out. He’s got a smile on, but not too big of a smile.
There’s still two more games to win.
But he can pause for now to acknowledge the long-awaited return to the biggest stage in the sport for the Arizona Wildcats. The program’s going to the Final Four for the first time in 25 years, getting there with an authoritative second half power stroke over No. 2 seed Purdue that ended with a 79-64 anticlimax. Thousands in red, blue and white in the stands are screaming, laughing, crying, celebrating.
Lloyd’s taking it in.
Less than a minute ago, he was hugging and high-fiving with none other than Mix Master Mike, forever of Beastie Boys fame and acclaim, now a dear friend of Lloyd’s. Life has changed so much, but also not that much at all, for the 51-year-old former Gonzaga assistant who helped guide two of those teams to the national title game in 2017 and 2021.
This, tonight, is different. Those Gonzaga teams were the design of Mark Few. This is now Lloyd’s doing. He’s brought Arizona back to the promised land, and as thousands cheer, he’s humbly standing alone, just waiting for a reporter to interrupt the moment.
Of course I had to.
Did Lloyd think this was possible all those years ago, as a carefree hooper growing up in Kelso, Washington?
“I would say, yeah,” Lloyd told CBS Sports on the court. “I 100% believed it. I’ve always dreamed big. I mean, I’m not surprised. I’m respectful of the moment, but this isn’t the greatest thing to ever happen in my life. I’ve got a great family, and I’ve had a lot of good experiences, but I’m a big dreamer.”
For decades, Lloyd dreamed up what he would do and how he would run a program if he was ever given the chance. In April 2021, Arizona gave him that opportunity despite Lloyd never being a head coach. His reputation was terrific as a program-builder and international recruiter, but it was still a gamble.
It paid off on Saturday night. Hiring Lloyd altered Arizona’s trajectory and redefined the upper echelon of the reformed, 16-team Big 12.
And as Arizona readies for a trip to Indianapolis, it must be acknowledged: Arizona has spent more weeks as the No. 1 team this season and been the winningest program over the past five seasons because Lloyd has tripled down on his refusal to bend to modern convention of overl relying on 3-point-oriented offense.
The best coaches, no matter the sport, not only innovate, they force those around them to adapt by virtue of their convictions. Tommy Lloyd is that, and Saturday night’s dismantling of Purdue was the latest evidence that shows his style was always going to work.
“He builds confidence,” Arizona associate head coach Jack Murphy told CBS Sports. “I’ve just seen that from Year 1 to Year 5. He’s been steady, the same person every single day when it comes to work. Doesn’t change, doesn’t get too high or too low. Now, he’s very competitive, yes, and I’ve beaten him in pickleball. He doesn’t like that. But he does not change, and he instills ultimate confidence in everybody, his staff and his players.”
At a time when Steph Curry’s influence and modern analytics’ grip on the 3-pointer has never been more inescapable, here is Lloyd’s Arizona program bucking convention and kicking ass on the way to potentially the best season in program history.
The Wildcats rank 363rd in 3-point rate, shooting from beyond the long line just 26.4% of the time. What’s more, this team is the first ever to be bottom five in 3-point rate and make the Final Four since North Carolina did it (with something of a similar system) in 2008.
The message is always: north-south, go! go! go! Go at the opponent every time. Drive the ball. Play on two feet as often as possible. The gaps are there, find them, and drive your line when the space comes open. From there, the 3-point options will emerge, but don’t take a good shot when a great one is waiting for your teammate two or three passes away — and that teammate might wind up being you.
“He likes us to call it an insurance policy,” Arizona star senior point guard Jaden Bradley told CBS Sports.
Bradley‘s ever-reliable second-half steadiness was one of the key components that drove yet another Arizona win over yet another ranked opponent, now the 14th of its 36 victories this season.
“Obviously everyone wants to go shoot the basketball; it’s a huge part of the next level,” Arizona assistant TJ Benson said. “That’s all they ever talk about. But I think as the season started going along, these guys have been the most coachable group I think we’ve had in five years, and we’ve had some great groups. But just understanding, nah, man, we’re gonna put our head down. This is a strength of ours. We’re not gonna let people take that away.”
Through four games in this tournament, Arizona is averaging a modest 13.3 3-point attempts, the fewest of any Final Four team since 2014-15 Kentucky. Only five other Final Four teams in the past 20 years averaged fewer, doing so before the 3-point revolution to the evolution.
It’s not that Lloyd’s team can’t shoot the 3 — at 36.7%, it ranks a solid-but-not-spectacular 37th overall — it’s that it gets the win by most other avenues.
Two years ago, when Arizona left the Pac-12 for the Big 2, Benson went to Lloyd and they discussed whether they needed to change and lean into the 3-pointer because of the league upgrade. Lloyd was open to it but came back to his style: tough players with incredible conditioning who magnetize to the paint instead of floating around on the perimeter.
Said stud freshman Brayden Burries: “Coming here, I actually didn’t know too much about the play style. I just knew what coach Lloyd told me, that he believed in me, and I believed in him.”
Burries got off to a slow start this season. In June he’ll be a lottery pick in the NBA Draft.
“He is who he is and who he’s always been,” Benson said. “Gonzaga was that smash mouth basketball. At the end of the day, we’ve had a lot of good players that are great at putting their head down, getting to the paint, and then making plays with their teammates or for themselves.”
And it showed again on Saturday night, especially in the second half. The game was really good until it wasn’t. The SAP Center felt tense … until Arizona cut the slack and ran away down the stretch. At halftime, it looked like Purdue might pull off the upset and get to a second Final Four in three seasons. The Boilermakers drained seven 3-pointers in the first 20 minutes and had a seven-point lead on Arizona going into the break.
Arizona proceeded to pick up the pace, only shooting 3-pointers as necessary (4 of 9) and ultimately overcame their sixth halftime deficit of the season — and their largest NCAA Tournament halftime gap in program history.
“We went back to our Plan A,” Lloyd told CBS Sports. “We kind of lost our way at the end of the first half on offense. We put JB (Jaden Bradley) on Braden (Smith) instead of Ivan Kharchenkov, and JB was unbelievable chasing him through everything.”
The Wildcats held Purdue to just nine points in the first 10 minutes of the second half and outscored them 48-26 overall after the break. The 22-point differential was Purdue’s worst of the season — and this coming after Purdue averaged 81.4 points in its previous seven wins heading into Saturday night. Arizona held it 17 below that number.
Purdue coach Matt Painter put it bluntly Saturday night when he said, “Sometimes people don’t understand those great teams, they just cause problems.”
Arizona is a 40-minute problem every time it suits up.
The defense is the best of any team Lloyd has coached, both at Arizona and Gonzaga. The Wildcats are No. 1 in defensive efficiency. After Purdue’s senior nucleus of Braden Smith, Fletcher Loyer and Trey Kaufman-Renn averaged 58 points on 55% shooting in the three previous games, Arizona stymied them to 31 total points on 31.6% shooting.
This group has won its past four games by 20.5 points on average, the sixth-best margin of any Final Four team since 2000.
“We have the personnel to do it, the will to do it, and I know how to coach it,” Lloyd said. “I think that’s it, the place of my strength as a coach. … You’ve just got to hang with it. You can’t abort mission, you know? You just can’t. It’s not how you win.”
This team showed who it was in the first game of the season, when it shot 2-of-5 from 3-point range and beat the reigning national champions/future fellow No. 1 seed Florida 93-87. Koa Peat had statistically maybe the greatest freshman debut ever in that game, going for 30 points, seven rebounds, five assists, three steals and a block.
Peat won the West Region Most Outstanding Player after averaging 17.5 points and 6.8 rebounds the past four games in the tournament. That’s not an outstanding stat line, but that’s Arizona basketball. The Wildcats had six players score at least 14 points in the 109-88 Sweet 16 slicing of Arkansas, becoming the first team ever to pull off the feat.
“Tommy has done an unbelievable job with culture-building, team building, getting the right combination of guys,” Jason Gardner told CBS Sports. Gardner holds a special place on this staff. He was part of the last team to make the Final Four back in 2001.
“To get back here,” Gardner, “it takes a camaraderie. It takes an unbelievable staff. It takes guys to buy in. It takes guys to share the wealth. It takes the community, fan base to rally around you when times are tough. It takes everybody.”
Lloyd has won 148 games in his first five seasons, easily a record for the best five-year start to a head coaching career in men’s college hoops history. He’s done it with the belief that freshmen can get you there, too. That’s a privileged place to recruit from, and only a handful of schools can try it. But beyond all else, he’s done it with conviction without bending to convention.
That’s living the dream.
And the dreaming isn’t done.
“I can’t wait to get a couple days off, put my feet up a little bit, and then let’s start preparing for the next one,” Lloyd said before he went to find his family on the floor.
Calm, casual, unwavering belief. You can’t fake that. Arizona is no dream. This team is as real as it gets and should be considered the favorite to win two more in Indianapolis.
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