Arizona Basketball: 6 candidates to replace Sean Miller as head coach

Tommy Lloyd

When a job as big as Arizona opens up, it’s not surprising to see some of the big-name coaches mentioned for the gig. For the sake of this article, we’re going to skip the speculation on coaches like Eric Musselman, who could be a legitimate candidate but also has his current program in fantastic shape for next season. Instead, we turn our attention to who should immediately be the top candidate for the gig, if he so desires to leave eastern Washington.

Lloyd has spent most of his life in Washington, playing collegiately briefly for CSU-Pueblo in addition to two junior colleges in the state. In his younger days, he became a friend of then Gonzaga head coach Dan Monson and would later join Mark Few’s staff with the Bulldogs full-time. Lloyd has been on the Gonzaga bench for the last 20 seasons and has played an integral role in the recruitment of Gonzaga’s international talent.

Lloyd has more than earned his shot as a head coach, even at a bigtime institution like Arizona. The biggest question would be Lloyd’s interest in the position. He’s got a great thing going on Few’s bench, and after losing the national championship game again he might be even more driven to stick it out at Gonzaga for the future. On the contrary, twenty seasons as an assistant has shaped Lloyd well and he could very well be the person to rescue Arizona from this murky crowd and reestablish them as one of the west coast’s best basketball teams.