Why Tommy Lloyd should be kept at Arizona basketball long-term

29/03/2024 20:41

Arizona basketball fell in the Sweet 16 for the second time in three seasons under Tommy Lloyd, who fell victim to a feat not yet broken.

The Wildcats are now 23 years removed from their last “Final Four,” a streak that has traumatized and broken spirits in Tucson. Lloyd recapped his team’s loss with some positivity.

“I thought we were fine,” said Lloyd, who took time to praise Arizona’s team and said their “day in the sun” with the Final Four would come. “We didn’t play well to start the game early, down eight at half. We had a couple other games where we were down 19 or 20 and be able to come back and win them. So I thought we were fine, I thought we were well-positioned for how we started the game.

“…Just were never able to (build a lead). Clemson gets a ton of credit for that.”

Here is why Lloyd’s latest defeat should not subject him to the streak that he endured from the late years of Sean Miller, and subjectively the aftermath from the Lute Olson retirement.

The game itself

Lloyd is someone who has certain expectations for his program. Arizona basketball will recruit international players since that is the recruiting style Lloyd, who was a 20-plus season assistant to Gonzaga under Mark Few, implemented.

"I know there’s some great isolation players in the NBA, but there’s a lot of players that really know how to play basketball and move the ball well, and they’re playing with some great concepts,” Lloyd said.

That does not mean Arizona will cut high-level players. The Wildcats picked up estranged North Carolina and former NCAA Tournament standout Caleb Love, who is known by many as a bad shot-taker, to their team. Love went on to have the best field-goal percentage of his career but did not shoot well in the Wildcats’ Sweet 16 77-72 loss to Clemson.

“Those guys re-affirmed my belief that we need to continue with high-character guys,” said Lloyd.

Love, who improved his field-goal percentage to 43 this season — a career-high — regressed from his positive first two NCAA Tournament games, shooting 5-of-18 in the Tigers’ win.

Keshad Johnson and Pelle Larsson also shot a combined 5-of-17 and struggled to guard their one-on-one matchups and switching from the Tigers’ baseline out-of-bounds actions.

Clemson’s PJ Hall, who is their leading scorer, and Ian Schieffelin combined for 31 of Clemson’s points. Arizona had a chance to take the lead but in the second half could not get timely stops, which is something Love was not directly to blame about.

The Caleb Love experiment goes faulty

Arizona basketball took a chance to add Love, who shot North Carolina to the national championship game two years ago. He then could not help get the Tar Heels to the NCAA Tournament last year, marking the first time a preseason No. 1 team in the AP Top 25 could not qualify for “March Madness.”

Love was named Pac-12 Player of the Year, and Arizona is a No. 2 seed in the tournament thanks to an upset win over Duke, who Love rivaled with at UNC.

But the Love experiment reared its head in the Clemson loss.

Boswell, transfers underperform

Oumar Ballo finished with a tremendous 15-point, 15-rebound effort but could have made the difference on the scoreboard if he made all of the six free throws he failed to convert.

Ballo’s performance was maybe the Wildcats’ best, meaning their other starters and role players didn’t perform.

Guard Jaden Bradley turned up the Wildcats’ pace and pressure, but Johnson, second-team All-Pac-12 forward Pelle Larsson and starting point guard Kylan Boswell combined to shoot 6-of-23. Guard KJ Lewis also made 2-of-6 shots.

The streak

Arizona is dying of thirst for a championship in professional and collegiate, high-profit teams. The Wildcats had maybe their best chance to advance to the Final Four since 2001 with three all-conference players in their lineup, including Love, who had the most active points by a player in the NCAA Tournament. With Ballo manning the middle and Johnson, an NCAA finalist with San Diego State in 2022-23, on the roster, Arizona had experience and size to try and advance to the Final Four in Glendale.

The Wildcats fell short of a second national championship in 2001. Since then, Arizona has brought in professional talent but has not been able to escape what some would consider the dog days of the program’s history, since it reached the Final Four four times in 13 years under former coach Lute Olson.

Lloyd has been a part of this program in the years after the meteoric collapse of the team from Sean Miller. Miller was the subject of an NCAA investigation into a program that held a self-imposed ban in his final year as coach in 2020-21.

From the jump, Lloyd — who had no prior head-coaching experience — proved he is the man for the job. He is the winningest coach in men’s and women’s college basketball, so it is hard to quantify how important his turnaround has been for a program that may have collapsed otherwise.

What’s next?

Arizona will move to the Big-12, which has been dominated by Kansas. The Wildcats will have the No. 1 recruiting class in the conference, led by top-40 prospects by 247Sports Carter Bryant and Jamari Phillips. The two will be alongside Bradley, who had 18 points in the Clemson loss, and assumingly Lewis. The Wildcats will also seek to aggresively target the transfer portal.

“I love the culture that we’re really starting to build upon at Arizona,” said Lloyd. “I’m real big on eventually getting some compound return on our investment, and I think we’re going to get that. I think we’re doing all the right things.

“I love where we’re at. I think I wasn’t ready to take a breath, but I’m going to take a breath. And we’re going to have another really good offseason and continue to build.”

Love has one season of eligibility but it is more likely than not he declares for the NBA Draft. Ballo, who left Gonzaga to play with Lloyd, could return.

The Wildcats are still in position to compete for conference championships. Remember: it took Lute Olson five years to reach his first Final Four.

For all the noise about Lloyd, Arizona should at least see his contract through since he signed a five-year deal last month. That was done for a reason, which is that he has proven to be a leader the program needed.

The post Why Tommy Lloyd should be kept at Arizona basketball long-term appeared first on ClutchPoints.