By Dana O’Neil, CNN
Indianapolis (CNN) — As their lives have darted and stretched in different directions, Tommy Lloyd, Mark Few and Dan Monson have tried to keep the Wednesday night of the Final Four sacrosanct, a standing date to reconnect.
The three have been intertwined since 1999, back when Monson left his job as the head coach at Gonzaga for Minnesota, but made Few honor a promise to hire Lloyd as a graduate assistant.
Over the years, the gatherings have swelled. Wives joined in and eventually kids, the coaches’ children becoming so close over the years that they now operate their own text chain, and Lloyd’s daughter, Mimi, often traveling with the Fews and their daughter, Julai, to Maui.
On this particular Final Four Wednesday night, everyone gathered in Lloyd’s hotel suite. With his Arizona team here to play for its first national title since 1997, Lloyd landed the hosting responsibilities, though the swanky space did nothing to change the tenor of the party. The coaches swigged a few Pabst Blue Ribbons and told old war stories – most of which had the same starting spot.
Thirty-one years ago, Gonzaga made its first NCAA tournament in school history. The Zags’ didn’t last very long, bounced 87-63 by Maryland in the first round.
At 2 p.m. on Saturday, Few – Gonzaga’s current head coach – will be announced as part of the next class of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. Six hours later, Lloyd, a Zags’ 22-year assistant who just turned down the baby-blue-blood of North Carolina, will play in the national semifinal – a day-to-night combo that serves as yet another marker in what remains the most remarkable program rise in college basketball history.
“You know, I remember when Roy Williams went to Kansas and everyone said, ‘Well, of course. He worked at Carolina,’’ Few tells CNN Sports. “Well, Tommy deserved the Arizona job because of the work he did at Gonzaga. This is such a total Gonzaga thing, man. It’s the whole village.’’
The oft-told Zags story long has defied modern athletic logic. In 1998, the small Jesuit school in Spokane was so deep in a fiscal crisis as enrollment dwindled, some administrators fretted if the school could stay open. That season Monson led Gonzaga to the Sweet 16, the athletics front porch giving the school some brand swag to, if not save it from extinction at least give it a very solid boost.
Since then, the basketball program has grown from a flailing handcar to the little engine that could to a freight train.
Few has earned his rightful place in Springfield by revolutionizing the concept of a power school, not only leading the Zags to 27 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances but at least one tourney win in 24 of them. Four times Gonzaga has earned a 1-seed, and twice it played for a national title. Next year, the Zags will leave the West Coast Conference as the new prized and very coveted possession of the rejuvenated Pac 12.
The spillover effect fell directly onto Lloyd. When Monson, the program’s architect, opted to move on, he took over a Minnesota program buried beneath the dirt of an academic scandal that nearly leveled the program. Bill Grier, one of Monson’s longtime assistants, bounced in 2007 from Spokane to San Diego, inheriting a team with one tourney invite in 20 years.
“Those were the only jobs a Gonzaga coach could get,’’ Monson said. “Rebuild jobs. Hard jobs. Tommy stepped into a gold mine.’’
Though Arizona had its share of dust to shake – the job came open only after Sean Miller was fired amid an NCAA investigation – Lloyd did, in fact, take a basketball coaching bullet train.
No mid-major training wheels. No program in need of a rebuild. Arizona hasn’t had a losing season since 1983, the first year on the job for legendary Lute Olson. It has money to spend (purportedly among the highest NIL budgets), a devoted fan base and tradition.
Instead of needing to overcome the one-time stigma of tiny Gonzaga, Lloyd enjoyed a burnished reputation, having spent so much time with inarguably one of the standard bearers of the sport.
Lloyd likened his extended stay – a 22-year assistantship that is not the norm in a very upwardly mobile profession – to making a sound investment. He reasoned that you only get to leave once and to do it at the wrong time would, as in economics, risk blowing the entire investment.
“I was really comfortable and I think just that comfort allowed me to really deepen my learning and kind of learn myself and my identity and to have comfort in my own skin,’’ he said. “Because I wasn’t out trying to prove anything to anybody. I was just trying to do a good job.’’
The irony is not lost on anyone that were it not for a wild butterfly effect turned chain reaction, Lloyd very well may not be about to coach in the Final Four.
In 1999, Monson was recruiting a player at Walla Walla Community College, where Lloyd had started his playing career. The head coach, Jeff Reinland, had sent more than a few talented players Monson’s way and he called the coach for a favor. Lloyd was finishing up his overseas career and needed a landing spot.
Reinland asked Monson to bring him on as a GA. Monson agreed but then took the gig at Minnesota.
On his way out of Gonzaga, Monson made Few, his replacement, promise three things – that he would bring another Walla Walla player on as a walk-on; that he’d keep restricted earnings coach Scott Snyder on staff and that he’d save a spot for Lloyd. Few agreed, and a few months later, Monson called to check in on the new GA.
“So, Fewie says, ‘Yeah, he just stands in the corner at practice. What’s his name again?’’ Monson laughs. “Mark isn’t very good with names.’’
But Lloyd hung around – “he was like omnipresent,’’ Few says with a laugh – and made himself useful. Few eventually not only learned Lloyd’s name but heard about the coach’s lust for travel, how he and his wife, Chanelle, spent six months backpacking around Europe after Lloyd’s playing career dried up.
Gonzaga was still inching along in its build, and Few was smart enough to recognize his program had to think outside the box to build its roster. He suggested Lloyd lean into his international knowledge and see if he could find some recruits.
“I told him, you have to do something different,’’ Few says. “You can’t be like everybody else. And he just crushed it.’’
He crushed the budget, too. Few gave him his international calling card (those were a thing in the ‘90s) and a few months later ran up more than $2,000 on it. But Lloyd’s savvy recruiting brought players such as Ronny Turiaf (from France), Domantas Sabonis (from Lithuania) and Rui Hachimura (from Japan) to Spokane, and in return earned him his head coach’s trust.
In a profession filled with workaholic control freaks, Few is an exception. He will shut off his phone and escape to a favorite fishing hole mid-season and, whenever the Zags’ run comes to an end, happily escapes for the quiet of Hawaii. He treats his assistants as extensions of himself, not just as sidekicks. Before he left, Lloyd was technically Gonzaga’s coach in waiting, a title Brian Michaelsen now holds and it was not just a title.
“Mark gave Tommy the leeway to be who he is,’’ Monson says. “It’s about respect and trust. When he goes off and goes fishing, they’re in charge and that’s because he has the confidence in himself to let go and the trust in them to handle things. That’s why it works. That’s why Tommy was ready for this job.’’
This job, the Arizona job, now appears to be Lloyd’s job for as long as he wants it. After flirting with North Carolina this week and considering Villanova a year ago, Lloyd happily announced during his pre-Final Four press conference here that he was staying in Tucson. Administrators had worked out the details on a five-year extension.
It is, first and foremost, a giddy day for Arizona, but in a weird way, it’s another feather in the very full Gonzaga cap. Not only had a Zags’ guy gotten the Arizona job; he just said no to Carolina.
Time to pop another PBR.
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