SAN JOSE — Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd was down to the final question in his press conference at SAP Center Wednesday afternoon when a brash young reporter (okay, it was me) decided he needed to address the proverbial elephant in the room. Lloyd’s name has been bandied about as a top target at North Carolina from the moment the school fired Hubert Davis Tuesday night. What did he think about hearing his name mentioned for one of the top jobs in the country?
“Oh, wow, well, thanks. I preferred the first question about Mix Master Mike,” he replied good naturedly. “I already have one of the best jobs in the country. One thing we talk about in our program all the time, and I think I’ve gotten better at, and I think our team has been crushing it this year, is just the ability to have full focus and be present in the moment. … I’m 100 percent focused on Arizona basketball and this program, and I can’t wait until the ball gets thrown up tomorrow.”
It was a good answer, a smart answer. It was also an incomplete one, notable for what Lloyd didn’t say. He did not flat-out say he would not be the coach at North Carolina next season. He didn’t say he was interested, but he didn’t say he wasn’t.
Not surprisingly, that answer got the most attention on social media, but Lloyd gave an earlier reply that was more revealing. That’s because Lloyd is also being bandied about when it comes to discussing the best coaches in college basketball who have never made a Final Four. That might be a silly label to apply to Lloyd given that he is only in his fifth year as a head coach. But much like the North Carolina speculation, it is flattering in its own way. And the reality is that while this is the fourth time Lloyd has taken the Wildcats to the Sweet Sixteen, he has yet to get past this stage. His 2023 team was shocked by 15th-seeded Princeton in the first round.
When Lloyd was asked whether it was a burden for him and his player to know how important it was to get past this round, he gave another good, smart answer. “I don’t feel a burden,” he said. “I know it’s easy to create narratives. These are hard basketball games. Obviously we want to be playing Saturday, but we’re not going to look past this opportunity or make it like an end-all, be-all for anything because it’s not that. Our approach to our guys has been normal. Let’s just treat this as normal. Like, we’re playing on three days’ rest instead of four days’ rest. Well, we did that in the Big 12. So let’s treat this as normal and let’s not make it bigger than it normally is.”
That’s a healthy approach, but it also requires a dose of denial. The fact is, Thursday night’s Sweet Sixteen game against Texas is bigger than normal. The next one would be even bigger. Lots of really good coaches have never made a Final Four. The longer the drought lasts, the harder it is to take that big, final step.
Lloyd’s former boss and mentor at Gonzaga, Mark Few, knows that well. He did not make the Final Four until his 18th season as head coach at Gonzaga. The idea that not making the Final Four would be a source of pressure for Gonzaga given its slipper-still-fits roots might have been ludicrous for a while. But as the years went on and the Zags still didn’t get there, the narrative became a mountain. It was Few’s job to climb it without falling off a cliff.
“With me it was like, are you kidding me? We’re winning 85 percent of our games, we’ve been to every tournament. I’d rather do that than being a one-hit wonder make the Final Four,” Few told me during a telephone conversation on Wednesday. “I talked to Tommy today. I know he wants to win the next game. That’s what my deal was. Let’s just win the next game.”
Ironically, another coach whose team is in San Jose this week, Texas’ Sean Miller, is also on the list of best coaches who never made a Final Four. Miller has been to four Elite Eights, three with Arizona and one with Xavier. The only coach to go to more without winning one is the late former Temple coach John Chaney, who did it five times. I asked Miller on Wednesday whether he would feel unfulfilled if he ended his career without making the Final Four. “I think the easy answer is to say I can live without it, but I hope that’s not the case. You want to do it at least one time,” he said. “I was with Jim Boeheim once in Colorado Springs for USA Basketball. He said, ‘I promise you when you get to your first Final Four, it’ll be when you least expect it.’ That resonated with me because as you let the pressure build, often times it can work not only against you as a coach, but also your best players on your team.”
Purdue coach Matt Painter, whose team is also in this West regional, knows all about that pressure. He, too, was a mainstay on the best-coach-never-to-make-the-Final-Four lists. That was an especially large albatross for the program because his predecessor and mentor, Gene Keady, also never got there during his 25-year tenure as head coach. “I didn’t look at it as a burden personally. I looked at it as a burden towards Purdue,” Painter said. “I didn’t like it. If you’re in the position as a head coach at a high major school and it bothers you when people say stuff, you’re going to be in a tailspin for a while. But I didn’t like them saying it about my school. That affects you.”
Asked whether he felt personally validated when he finally did break through and get Purdue to the Final Four in 2024, Painter replied, “Not really. I’m not worried about my validation. I’m just worried about coaching guys and helping them and winning for Purdue.”
Being on this list falls somewhere on the ven diagram between compliment, insult, and damning-with-faint-praise. But Painter is right about one thing: Winning is the best answer. For Lloyd, two wins would end this particular conversation and vault him into NCAA Tourament lore. When and if that deed is done, he can turn to the larger questions that could be looming from Chapel Hill.
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