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Add Hall of Famer to the list of accolades for Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd.
Lloyd was inducted into the A Step Up Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame Sunday for his two decades of service as an assistant at Gonzaga.
Lloyd joined seven other coaches as part of the 2020 Hall of Fame class, which was originally supposed to be inducted last spring. The other inductees were Bill Brock (Baylor), Al Brown (Duke, retired), Karl Hobbs (Rutgers), Jolette Law (South Carolina), Kenny Payne (New York Knicks) and Bob Starkey (Auburn) and Bill Guthridge (North Carolina). Guthridge was honored posthumously.
This was the second ever class to be honored by A Step Up, an organization that offers professional development symposiums for rising college basketball coaches.
Arizona Athletic Director Dave Heeke presented Lloyd with his Hall of Fame jacket as part of a pre-recorded video.
“It’s an honor to be in a class of such esteemed assistant coaches, and something I never could have dreamed of,” Lloyd said. “To be put in the same class as the guy named Bill Guthridge is an amazing honor. Coach is somebody I looked up to from afar for years, longtime assistant coach at university of North Carolina, and to be honest with you, I thought I was following his same career path and was going to be a longtime assistant coach at Gonzaga and then take over as head coach at the end of my career. But things have changed in the past few weeks.”
Lloyd went on to thank former Gonzaga assistant Donny Daniels (Class of 2019 inductee), Bulldogs head coach Mark Few, who made Lloyd “feel like an owner in the program” and GU athletic director Mike Ross.
“I wish them the best moving forward and thank them for supporting me in my decision to leave Gonzaga, because it definitely wasn’t an easy decision and their support helped give me the strength to make a tough decision,” Lloyd said.
The 46-year old Lloyd joined Gonzaga’s staff in 2000 and worked his way to being one of the top assistant coaches in men’s basketball prior to taking the Arizona job last month.