Tommy Lloyd: What To Know About New Arizona Basketball Coach

TUCSON, AZ — The Arizona Wildcats have a new men's basketball coach for the first time since 2009.

Tommy Lloyd is tasked with guiding the Wildcats forward, after the program fired Sean Miller last week.

Lloyd previously served as an assistant coach for Gonzaga for 20 seasons, helping head coach Mark Few guide the Bulldogs to 18 West Coast Conference championships and two NCAA Tournament championship game appearances.

Prior to joining Few's staff in Spokane, the 46-year-old played professional basketball in Australia and Germany.

Here's what to know about the Arizona Wildcats' new head coach:

• Lloyd is regarded as an international recruiting savant, having helped Few land future NBA players, Ronny Turiaf (France), Robert Sacre, Kelly Olynyk, Kevin Pangos (Canada), Rui Hachimura (Japan). That skill set will come in handy for Lloyd in Tucson, given how the Wildcats currently have six international players on their roster.
• Lloyd has never coached collegiate basketball outside of Spokane, having joined the Bulldogs staff in 2001 after serving as a volunteer administrative assistant during Few's first season at Gonzaga in 2000.
• Lloyd had reportedly turned down head coaching offers at several schools. He was the "head coach in waiting" at Gonzaga, prior to leaving for Tucson, with Gonzaga Athletic Director Mike Roth once telling ESPN's Jeff Borzello, "Tommy has it in writing from me and the [university] president that says, as long as he's here, when Mark retires, it's your job. He's got a document. I've got a document. The president's got a document. Our general counsel has a document. It's his job."
• Lloyd was a one-man scoring machine during his playing days at Walla Walla Community College in the early '90s. He once scored 52 points to set the school's single-game scoring record in 1995 during a game in Oregon, speaking to the 6-foot-4-inch guard's ability to light it up when he toed the hardwood. Whether Lloyd can still hold his own in pickup games against the likes of Arizona starters Dalen Terry, Bennedict Mathurin, etc., is yet to be seen.
• Lloyd and his family once quite literally lived out of a suitcase, as he and his wife, Chanelle, jet-setted their way across the globe to get a sense for what the world had to offer, according to Sports Illustrated. Lloyd credits the experience as being elemental to his eventual role at Gonzaga as the program's international recruiting expert.