Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd makes 'panic' admission after Duke loss
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Behind 24 points, 6 rebounds and 3 assists from freshman phenom Cooper Flagg, the Duke Blue Devils scored a 69-55 win over the Arizona Wildcats on Friday night in front of the Cameron Crazies in a rare early-season matchup between top 25 programs not played at a neutral site.
After the game, Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd took the time to acknowledge both the atmosphere in Cameron and the weight of the matchup.
"Great atmosphere. Just unfortunately, we didn't play the way we had hoped to play,” Tommy Lloyd said after the game, according to Brian Pedersen of AZ Desert Swarm. “A lot of credit goes to Duke. They played a great game. They have a great, great team and a great program. It was an honor to play them here, and I wish it would have went a little better for us, but that's how it goes sometimes."
Lloyd would go on to address the fact that when it comes to certain programs, the panic meter is naturally a little more temperamental because of the annual expectations placed on them. He knows all too well that Arizona, after a string of successful regular seasons that have been followed by early NCAA Tournament flameouts.
“When you're a program like Duke or Arizona and you lose a game, I mean, panic ensues,” Lloyd said.
It’s not just that Arizona has now lost back to back games for the first time in Lloyd’s tenure. It’s that in back-to-back games, the Wildcats have given up their most points (103 against Wisconsin) and scored their fewest points (55 against Duke) since Lloyd took over in 2021. It also doesn’t help that Caleb Love, who historically has had huge games against Duke dating back to his tenure at North Carolina, was limited to just eight points against the Blue Devils.
Despite the fact that Lloyd is well-aware of what’s expected from his program and willing to admit that Caleb Love is in something of a funk, he’s not ready to press the panic button just yet.
"We need to take a step back and figure out why. Are there some schematic problems? Are there some problems with how our personnel is kind of put together? And those are the things we're going to take a look at.”
Arizona has less than a week to regroup before they open the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament with a quarterfinal matchup against the Davidson Wildcats. If things go as the rankings suggest they would, we could see an Arizona/Gonzaga showdown in the Final, setting the stage for Lloyd to go up against the program he served as an assistant for for two decades. But this version of the Wildcats is undoubtedly more vulnerable than they appeared heading into the season.
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