Heel Tough Blog: Tommy Lloyd to Stay At Arizona

Arizona Sports

Before his team competes in tomorrow night’s Final Four, Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd agreed to a five-year contract extension that’ll keep Lloyd in Tucson, after a week’s worth of speculation that he might leave for the vacant UNC job. After UNC fired Hubert Davis after losing in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, and hired a search firm to help conduct the search, they identified Lloyd, as their top candidate, after setting a record for most wins by a coach in his first five years of coaching, while guiding the Wildcats to three conference regular season titles, three conference tournament titles, before finally breaking through in the Big Dance, making their first Final Four since 2001. According to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander, UNC offered Lloyd a contract that would’ve made him one of the two highest-paid coaches in college basketball, but he took less to stay at Arizona, earning a raise of 4.85 million to 7.2 million, which makes him the fourth highest paid coach in the sport. Another big win for Lloyd in his contract, which compelled him to stay, is that he’s no longer required to report to his AD, Desiree Reed-Francois, and will instead answer to the Arizona president, Suresh Garimella. 

When addressing the media this afternoon, here is what Lloyd had to say about declining the North Carolina job offer: "I'm happy to announce I'm staying at Arizona. We've been able to get some things done the past couple (of) days. Arizona basketball, you guys know what it means to me, and when I say it's a special place, that always comes from the bottom of my heart." He would also add the following, "It's an honor to even be considered for that job. The young kid, for me, the college basketball junkie watching those games at home, never would have thought something like that could have happened to somebody like me. North Carolina is a first-class organization, and I appreciate them for the way they've handled this."

This will force the UNC search to turn its attention to Michigan’s Dusty May, who will face off against Tommy Lloyd’s Arizona team tomorrow night in the Final Four. May has maintained for the last week or so that he is not willing to comment on a job that is not his, and the belief is that he will use UNC as leverage to get a pay raise at Michigan. If May is not interested, the next candidate in line is Billy Donovan of the Chicago Bulls, whose season doesn’t end until April 12th, almost five days after the transfer portal opens up.