The offseason is here, with all of Arizona’s sports done for 2024-25 season and the 2025-26 campaigns still a little ways away.
Which makes this a great time to step back and see how all of the Wildcats’ programs are doing and how they’ve handled the move from the Pac-12 to the Big 12
Over the next few weeks we’ll take a look at each of the UA’s men’s and women’s athletic programs to see what shape they’re in and what prospects they have for the near future. We’ll break down each team and evaluate how it is performing under its current coaching staff, looking at the state of the program before he/she arrived and comparing it to now while also evaluating how that program fits into its new conference.
Next up: Tommy Lloyd’s men’s basketball team
How it looked before
The Sean Miller era was mostly successful, with Arizona winning several Pac-12 titles and reaching the second weekend of the NCAA five times with a trio of Elite Eight appearances. But the tail end of Miller’s dozen years in charge were clouded by the program’s involvement in an FBI bribery scandal that led to assistant coach Book Richardson doing time and ESPN making claims that were never substantiated but were considered true in the court of public opinion.
A self-imposed postseason ban in 2020-21 served as the proper time to make a change, with then-athletic director Dave Heeke (as well as former school president Dr. Robert Robbins) opting to go with a first-time head coach. It was a true sign the school wanted to start over while also hoping Lloyd’s 20-plus years as an assistant at Gonzaga under Mark Few had provided him with a foundation to build from.
Going 33-4 with Pac-12 regular season and conference tournament titles, a No. 1 seed in the 2022 NCAA tourney and a trip to the Sweet 16 made Lloyd an instant success.
Where things stand now
With a 112-73 record through his first four seasons, Lloyd has the second-most wins of any first-time head coach to start his career. The victories have decreased (and the losses increased) each season, though, with Arizona going 24-13 in 2024-25 while reaching the Sweet 16 for the third time in four years.
So far, Lloyd and his staff have managed to navigate the constantly changing landscape of college basketball by blending returners, transfers and freshmen on the roster. This coming season will see the largest freshman class under Lloyd, with seven prep or international recruits set to be on the team.
While the program hasn’t been able to end Arizona’s now 24-year Final Four drought, the consistency of the results under Lloyd has earned him three contract extensions. The most recent, signed in April, keeps him locked up through 2028-29 at an average annual salary of $5.8 million. The deal also includes the ability to sign assistants to long-term deals and creates a process where Lloyd gets to submit a budget each year for revenue sharing and other resources.
Big 12 vs. Pac-12
Of all the sports that Arizona offers, none was expected to benefit more from the change in conferences than men’s basketball. Regularly at or near the top in the Pac-12, that came at the expense of lower national expectations thanks to that league’s diminishing reputation. The hope was a move to the Big 12 would help return Arizona to the upper echelon of college basketball.
One year in, the move looks like it’s been worth it. Despite finishing fourth in the regular season and losing 12 games prior to the NCAA Tournament, the Wildcats garnered a No. 4 seed and got to stay out west for the opening weekend. The Big 12 got seven teams in the tourney, more than the Pac-12 did in any of the last 10 NCAA tourneys, with three reaching the Sweet 16, two making the Elite Eight and Houston getting to the title game.
Despite the tougher league slate, Lloyd hasn’t let up when it comes to nonconference scheduling. The upcoming lineup is possibly the best the Wildcats have ever faced outside of conference play.
One big question
Is the Sweet 16 the ceiling? Arizona is one of seven schools to make at least three Sweet 16s in the past four seasons. But each of the six others (Alabama, Arkansas, Duke, Gonzaga, Houston and Tennessee) have gone further during that span, with Duke and Houston getting to the Final Four.
This past season was the first time since 2015 that the UA was not the higher-seeded team when it was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament. Since making back-to-back Elite Eights in 2014-15 the Wildcats have been knocked out by four double-digit seeds (most infamously No. 15 Princeton in 2023 in Lloyd’s second season) and their foils in 2022 and 2024 were each four seeds lower.
All men’s basketball coaches at Arizona will be compared to Lute Olson, fair or not, though at this point just making it to an Elite Eight should be enough to satisfy most of a fan base that keeps living in 1997.