Patience needed for Arizona Basketball and Tommy Lloyd

With Arizona Basketball deeply entrenched in the off-season, Wildcats fans will need to remain patient with Tommy Lloyd over the coming weeks. 

It has been a busy month for newly hired Arizona Basketball head coach Tommy Lloyd as he not only gets acclimated to Tucson but also being a head coach.

At a place like Arizona, the expectations are always high, and for 2021 that was especially true after coach Lloyd inherited a team that was likely to be in the preseason Top 20.

Arizona Wildcats

Unfortunately, just like with every coaching change that happens, there is always going to be a bit of a change and naturally, roster turnover happens. For Arizona, that is certainly the case as the Wildcats have seen numerous transfers and de-commitments thus far.

Well, as we are also learning, Lloyd won’t necessarily find immediate success on the recruiting trail either, as Lloyd has essentially had to play catch-up in a few recruitments so far.

As you may have seen in recent weeks, the Wildcats lost out on highly-touted in-state recruit TyTy Washington, and now the team came up just short in their recruitment of four-star in-state forward, Arthur Kaluma.

While disheartening, understand that Lloyd was essentially recruiting with a disadvantage since previous head coach Sean Miller didn’t offer either Kaluma or Washington, and in recruiting, relationships matter.

Remember, when Miller was hired, it did take some time before he started to see some recruiting success.

If Arizona Basketball is going to have the continued success that we’ve grown accustomed to, recruiting matters as does development and coaching.

All of that will possibly come in time, but for now, it is important for Wildcat fans to remain patient throughout this process, and not overanalyze every recruiting outcome, especially like the ones with Kaluma and Washington.

Chances are Lloyd will be just fine, and he will start to eventually win some of those recruiting battles, however, for now, we need to remain patient.