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Gonzaga Basketball

Former Gonzaga assistant Tommy Lloyd wins NABC Coach of Year in first season at Arizona

Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd cuts down the net after defeating UCLA in an NCAA college basketball game in the championship of the Pac-12 tournament Saturday, March 12, 2022, in Las Vegas. (Associated Pres)
By Theo Lawson theol@spokesman.com(509) 459-5584

In 2021, Mark Few won the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ National Coach of the Year after leading Gonzaga to a 31-1 record and berth in the national championship game.

This year, the award went to one of Few’s longtime assistants, Tommy Lloyd, who struck immediate success in his first season as the coach at Arizona.

Lloyd was announced as NABC Coach of the Year on Tuesday after leading Arizona to a 33-4 record, Pac-12 Tournament and regular-season championships and a run to the Sweet 16 in the NCAA Tournament.

The Wildcats, similar to the Bulldogs, earned a No. 1 seed in the tournament and like Gonzaga did not advance to the Elite Eight after losing to Houston 72-60 in San Antonio. The Bulldogs dropped out of the tournament with a 74-68 loss to Arkansas in the Sweet 16.

Last offseason, Lloyd, a Gonzaga assistant from 2001-21, took over an Arizona program that was still dealing with the aftermath of the FBI’s investigation into college basketball corruption. The Wildcats self-imposed a one-year postseason ban after the NCAA charged the program with five Level I violations.

Under Lloyd, the Wildcats finished with their highest win total since 2014-15, won the regular-season Pac-12 title for the first time since 2017-18 and spent the final four weeks of the season ranked No. 2 – one spot behind Few and Gonzaga – in the Associated Press Top 25 poll.

Lloyd became the first Pac-12 coach to win the NABC award since Mike Montgomery (Stanford) in 2004 and he and Few are the only Western-based coaches to have won it since San Diego State’s Steve Fisher in 2011. Few has won the award twice, in 2017 and 2021.