Arizona men’s basketball announces signing of 7-footer Dylan Anderson

The early signing period began Wednesday for all sports other than football, which has led to a flood of “welcome to the family” tweets from various college team accounts.

But only one of those applies to Arizona’s men’s basketball program, which to this point has just a single commitment in the 2022 recruiting class. And Dylan Anderson is now officially official.

Anderson, a 7-footer from Gilbert, Ariz., is nicely ranked by 247Sports as the No. 69 player in the 2022 class, as well as the 12th-best center and No. 6 prospect from Arizona. The Perry High School product committed to the UA last April, just days after Tommy Lloyd was hired to replace Sean Miller as head coach.

Lloyd spoke about his recruiting plans for the near future on Monday, noting that the overall 2022 class may be small since he expects the vast majority of his current roster to still be around next season.

“I really like the young core of this team, I mean I really believe in it, and moving forward I really believe in it long term,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes, but I think there’s enough pieces on this team right now to have a great nucleus for a couple of years and be a really, really good team. What I don’t want to do is get greedy and bring in some things that might mess up where we’re at in our chemistry.”

Guard Justin Kier is the only player Arizona is guaranteed to lose from this roster, as he’s a sixth-year senior. Beyond that it would be the product of transfers or guys turning pro.

But some of those departures might not be able to be filled depending on whatever sanctions Arizona is hit with by the NCAA, whenever the IARP finally gets around to finishing its work on the Wildcats’ case.

“There’s also the NCAA issues that are still lingering, so there’s a lot of things that factor into recruiting,” Lloyd said. “I want this program to be solidified and locked and loaded, and when the runway is clear for us to take off, I want to be ready to take off.”