“I’m staying at Arizona,” University of Arizona head men’s basketball coach Tommy Lloyd announced at a press conference on Friday.
Lloyd agreed to a monster five-year contract with the university that will start by paying him around $7.2 million next season, according to ESPN.
CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander reported that Lloyd had turned down “a top-two contract” offer from the University of North Carolina to stay at Arizona, as UNC searches for a replacement for recently fired head coach Hubert Davis.
Lloyd and his No. 1 Arizona Wildcats were flying high into their Final Four matchup with No. 1 Michigan on Saturday night, where Michigan promptly crashed the party.
Michigan never trailed against Arizona and won 91-73 in what was Arizona’s first Final Four appearance since reaching the national championship game and losing to Duke in 2001. Arizona’s lone national championship came in 1997.
“No wonder Tommy Lloyd wanted to get the extension done yesterday,” Yahoo! Sports senior college sports reporter Dan Wolken posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Goodness gracious, this is ghastly.”
Some fans online were critical while wondering whether Lloyd had been distracted by the UNC job offer. But Wolken’s sentiment was mostly echoed by a host of UNC fans, who seemed to indulge in schadenfreude after Lloyd reportedly declined to be the Tar Heels’ next head coach.
“Tommy Lloyd turned down the UNC job only to lose to future UNC coach Dusty May,” one user wrote, referring to Michigan’s head coach.
A UNC fan account chimed in, writing, “We dodged a huge bullet…woof.”
UNC analyst Kevin Carter wrote, “After tonight, Arizona will still only have 1 championship” with three laughing emojis.
To be fair to Lloyd, Arizona has reached at least the Sweet 16 in four of his five seasons as head coach since 2021. UNC fired Davis after a second straight first-round NCAA Tournament exit — this year, as a No. 6 seed, squandering a 19-point lead and losing to No. 11 VCU.
A user named Damon was perplexed that a “whole bunch of UNC fans that were desperate for Tommy Lloyd, who was never going there, suddenly think he’s the worst coach to ever step foot on a court.”
Nobody but Lloyd and UNC officials — and probably high-end college basketball reporters — definitively know how close Lloyd came to departing Tucson for Chapel Hill. But Lloyd kept his focus on the future of Arizona basketball after the devastating loss.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed we weren’t able to get it over the top for [the fans], but I think we all saw what’s possible again,” Lloyd said at his postgame press conference. “So, now, let’s all roll up our sleeves and support each other and see if we can make this a normal thing. That would be awesome. You sit around, and you dream as a coach, or you think, and these narratives in the media all get created that you can’t win the big one and whatever.”
Lloyd said he always knew Arizona would make it to the Final Four, but he isn’t satisfied now.
“One Final Four? Why don’t we go five times in 10 years?” Lloyd said. “That’s where my mind is at. […] That’s my big dream. Maybe you guys will use that against me someday, but I’m going to dream big and work my ass off to try and make it happen.”
In the meantime, UNC will continue its first nationwide coaching search in a generation.
Michigan’s Dusty May and Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan have been the two most consistent names to surface in reports and rumors. But as Lloyd just proved, nothing is official until it’s official.
