Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Success for Lloyd, Wildcats means turning Arizona back into 'Point Guard U'

The Star's longtime columnist on the point of Arizona's early Pac-12 hoops exit, Pima basketball back on familiar NJCAA turf, UA tennis a Top 5 program under Clancy Shields, ASU's uphill hoops battle and more.

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Pac-12 exit, past NCAA loss should remind us: Lloyd still early in head coaching career

If you listened closely to Tommy Lloyd’s many Q&A press sessions, he often interrupted his analysis of a Wildcat basketball player to say that he, Lloyd, “needs to get better’’ and “needs to improve.’’

Those were unfamiliar words and phrases at Arizona in the 40 years before Lloyd was hired. Lute Olson arrived at Arizona having coached 284 college games (and in five NCAA Tournaments). Sean Miller’s pre-Arizona résumé included 237 games and four NCAA Tournaments.

It’s easy to forget that Lloyd made his head coaching debut when he was 47. In 20 seasons as a Gonzaga assistant, he was never charged to call the Xs and Os or be responsible for developing a game plan.

Recruiting is the single most important component of college basketball, one at which Lloyd excels. But implementing and successfully executing strategy is the most difficult element a college basketball coach must master.

It takes time, through good and bad experiences.

This isn’t to suggest that Lloyd was out-coached by Oregon’s Dana Altman in Friday’s exit loss at the Pac-12 Tournament, but Altman was coaching his 1,147th game, in his 35th year as a head coach, which includes 16 NCAA Tournament seasons. If you don’t think that’s an advantage, what is?

Altman has seen it all. He became a head coach at Marshall in 1989, when Lloyd was 15. 

Altman’s confusing (and changing) zone defenses were so effective against Arizona that the Wildcats attempted just 47 shots. That’s the fewest in Lloyd’s three seasons, and the fewest at Arizona since January 2018.

That’s not intended as a knock at Lloyd. Few coaches had as much difficulty adjusting to zone defenses as did Miller. Zone defenses were Miller’s Achilles' heel.

Even Olson, a master at Xs and Os, famously exited the 1998 Elite Eight when Utah coach Rick Majerus installed a rarely used Triangle and Two defense against the defending NCAA champions. Arizona’s Mike Bibby, Miles Simon and Michael Dickerson combined to shoot 6 for 36 on that forgettable afternoon.

Majerus, 50, was in his 14th season as a head coach. On that day, he humbled a Hall of Fame coaching opponent.

Much like Majerus in 1998, Altman’s second-half defensive strategy Friday night was masterclass. I mean, Oumar Ballo did not attempt a shot. That’s inconceivable inasmuch as Ballo was Arizona’s leading scorer at halftime, making all five of his shots. Get him the ball, right?

Oregon all but took Ballo out of the game.

As Lloyd grows and gains experience as a play-caller, a more immediate charge is to develop or recruit a star-level point guard. Do you realize that other than the COVID year, Arizona — Point Guard U — has had just one first team All-Pac-12 point guard in the last 11 years (T.J. McConnell, 2015).

Over that period, even ASU has had two first-team point guards, Remy Martin and Jahii Carson. Oh, what the Wildcats would do to be able to put someone like 2013 Wildcat All-Pac-12 guard Mark Lyons on the court for the upcoming NCAA Tournament.

This is not meant to criticize UA sophomore point guard Kylan Boswell. As we’ve seen, he’s a work in progress. He might still become an all-conference caliber point guard. But in Arizona’s six losses to Pac-12 opponents this year, Boswell shot 17%, averaging 1.8 points per game.

For Arizona to move deep into the NCAA Tournament, and to win big next year in the Big 12, it must get considerably more production at the point. The Xs and Os will remain a challenge. Houston's Kelvin Sampson, and TCU's Jaime Dixon are in Altman's class as defensive strategists.

Friday’s unsightly loss to the Ducks shook the UA basketball foundation at its core. We will soon find out if it was just a one-game fluke or if Lloyd must go back to the lab and come up with Plan B.

Peabody, Pima back on familiar NJCAA turf

Brian Peabody has coached Pima College’s men’s basketball team to a 28-4 record, averaging an NJCAA-best 103 points per game, winning the Region I title and advancing to this week’s national championships in Danville, Illinois.

Yet Peabody was not selected the ACCAC coach of the year.

“That doesn’t matter to me,’’ he said with a laugh. “I didn’t even know it.’’

It’s not the first time Peabody, who coached the Aztecs to the 2017 national championship game with a 31-5 record, has been slighted.

In the NJCAA record book, a list of all coaches who reached the championship game from 1948-2023 lists Peabody as “Brian Peterson.’’

Peabody laughed when told about the incorrect listing.

“You know, we open the tournament Tuesday with Des Moines College, which won the national championship in 2022 and is 26-2,’’ said Peabody. “If we beat them, we’ll probably play National Park College (Arkansas), which is undefeated. No one said this would be easy.’’

If anyone knows what isn’t easy, it is Peabody, a Sahuaro High and UA grad, who coached Tucson high school teams Ironwood Ridge and Green Fields to state championships before becoming PCC’s coach in the fall of 2013.

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Pima was coming off an 18-game losing streak when Peabody agreed to replace Gabriel Van Guse, who had gone 10-49 in two seasons. Peabody has since gone 221-107.

“This team, our talent level is very similar to our 2017 championship-game team,’’ he said. “We have excellent leadership. We’ve got momentum. We’ve already signed five top players for next year. We’re not going to be awed by what’s in front of us.’’

The Aztecs are led by former Salpointe forward Dillon Baker, who is averaging 18 points per game. Former Marana High forward Wes Ball, a 6-8 freshman, was probably the missing piece from last year’s 25-7 team that made it possible to reach this week’s NJCAA finals.

Ball is the grandson of Kenny Ball, one of the key players on Tucson High’s famous 23-1 state championship team of 1969, considered one of the best in state history. Now the Aztecs have a chance to become the best PCC basketball team in its 52-year history.

UA’s black Friday eased by Clancy Shields’ excellence

Late Friday night, new Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois might’ve wondered what she has gotten herself into.

In a stretch of five hours, the UA basketball team was bounced out of the Pac-12 Tournament, Caitlin Lowe’s softball team was routed 13-2 in the Pac-12 home opener against Washington and Chip Hale’s baseball team blew a ninth-inning lead and lost 3-2 in its Pac-12 opener against Arizona State.

But if there has been one consistent winner on campus in recent years — a team to raise spirits — it is Clancy Shields’ men’s tennis team.

The Wildcats have climbed to No. 5 in the current ITA men’s tennis rankings, believed to be the highest in UA history. Shields, who has coached Arizona to back-to-back Pac-12 championships and three consecutive NCAA Tournaments, opens the Pac-12 season at long-time NCAA power USC on Friday.

Shields’ club, led by junior Colton Smith, the nation’s No. 8 ranked singles player, has already beaten No. 3 Texas, No. 10 Texas A&M, No. 11 Illinois and No. 15 Michigan State.

The last time an Arizona tennis team was ranked in the Top 5 was in the mid-1960s, when first-team All-Americans Bill Lenoir, George Stoesser and Brian Cheney challenged for the NCAA title for several years.

Now comes Shields, who has completely rebuilt the UA tennis program since being hired away from Utah State eight years ago. Former UA athletic director Dave Heeke was wise enough to extend Shields’ contract through 2028.

Short stuff: Desireé Reed-Francois' UNLV success story, UW legend and Tucsonan Mike Lude passes

• By far, the best hire of UA athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois’ career was UNLV women’s basketball coach Lindy La Rocque, whose Rebels have gone 30-2, 31-3 and 26-7 in the last three seasons, winning the MWC title three times. This year's 30-2 mark includes a 72-53 win over Arizona in Las Vegas in early December.

La Rocque had been an assistant at Stanford. It’s conceivable that Arizona could end up playing UNLV in a first-round NCAA Tournament game this week. Some bracketology projections have Arizona as a 10 seed and UNLV as a 7 seed, which would be a match. ESPN, however, lists Arizona as the “last team in’’ and an 11 seed. ...

• Tucson’s Bob Scofield completed his 25th Pac-12 basketball officiating season by working the Big Sky Conference women's title game, NAU vs. Eastern Washington, and the Pac-12 women's semifinal game, Stanford vs. Oregon State. One of Scofield’s former officiating pupils in Tucson referee camps, ex-UA basketball player Brenda Pantoja, worked the Pac-12 women's championship game and is a sure thing to be selected to work the NCAA Tournament this week. ...

• Sad to learn that Tucsonan Mike Lude, former athletic director at Washington and Auburn, died here on Thursday. He was 101. I strongly believe Lude was the leading AD in Pac-12 history, guiding the Huskies from 1975-91, becoming an exemplary example of how an athletic department could be fiscally independent and maintain A-level integrity. He was the first in the Pac-12 to become facilities-conscious, a builder of the first level.

Lude retired to Tucson in 1995 and helped to create the Southern Arizona Chapter of the College Football Hall of Fame. I went to lunch with Mike about two months ago with Tucson attorney Burt Kinerk. Ever independent, Lude drove to the restaurant himself and spent about 90 minutes talking about how he would reform the NCAA if he ever got the chance. He was a winner, start to finish. 

My two cents: ASU, Bobby Hurley still trudging uphill

After elimination at the Pac-12 Tournament last week, ASU coach Bobby Hurley warned about moving to the Big 12.

“I’ve watched a bit of Big 12 basketball. It’s strong, physical. It’s for grown-ass men,’’ said Hurley. “So you know we have to make some changes when we go to that league.’’

Changes? Don’t expect any. Here’s how the last four ASU basketball coaches have fared:

• Hurley: 155-131 in nine years, 54%.

• Herb Sendek: 159-137 in nine years, 55%.

• Rob Evans: 119-120 in eight years, 49%.

• Bill Frieder: 132-108 in eight years, 55%.

In those all-too-same years, ASU has reached a single Sweet 16 (1995).

Many ASU followers say the Sun Devils’ epic basketball failures since Ned Wulk was fired in 1982 are connected to Desert Financial Arena, built in 1974. But if you’ve been around the Pac-12 over four decades as I have, you plainly see that ASU’s basketball arena is no worse than WSU’s Beasley Coliseum (1972) or Stanford’s rebuilt Maples Pavilion, Colorado’s Special Events Center (1979), and Oregon State’s Gill Coliseum, built in 1951 and still seems that way.

It’s not all on the arena, it’s more the lack of recruiting success, lack of tradition and hiring the wrong coach. No Sun Devil coach has been able to change it.

A Phoenix media outlet last week revealed that Hurley’s contract extension, through 2026, has not been signed. Now might be a good time for Hurley to walk and bet on a better future at, say, West Virginia. But that depends on if his name still resonates in college basketball. It’s not 1992 any more.

When the 2024-25 Big 12 preseason poll is released next fall, it’s a good guess that ASU will be picked 16th of 16.