Arizona basketball coach Tommy Lloyd has spoken and his first thoughts a couple three years ago about the ranks aren’t any different than the ones he has now.
And although he didn’t say, they are “rat poison” like he did a few years ago in his early years with the Wildcats, he might as well have said that.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Lloyd said after his team’s 103-73 win just hours after moving into the No. 2 spot in the early-season polls. “That team they have that’s number one (Purdue) looks pretty good to me, too. If I’m worried about that kind of stuff, I’m not worried about the right stuff.”
History will say he shouldn’t be. It’s a fan water-cooler talk. Look-at-us talk. It’s mid-November and Arizona has been here before. For context, the last time Arizona was No. 2 and then No. 1 was Nov. 27 to Dec. 11 (when it became No. 1 for two weeks). It fell to No. 12 a month later and then ended the season at No. 11, losing to Clemson in the Sweet 16. It started the season at No. 12.
In the 2022-23 season, Arizona rose to No. 4 in the first month after starting at 17th. It stayed in the top 10 for every week but one for the rest of the season. It eventually lost to Princeton in the NCAA tournament’s first round.
In Lloyd’s first season at Arizona, Arizona was unranked but jumped into the top 10 (at eight) in the first month and stayed there the rest of the season before losing to Houston in the Sweet 16.
“Here’s what I tell our guys – the rankings are a vote,” Lloyd said. “They’re voted on by people. It’s not a result, it’s a vote. I’m not calling into question the votes, because I really spend no energy thinking about it. We’re not into what people are voting. If we were into that, we would have been worried about the preseason stuff. We’re into actually what we’re doing on the court and where we’re going.”
And what Arizona is doing is impressive. They are winning against perceived to be very good teams and winning big against teams it should win big against.
As Lloyd said, it’s a “process, process, process, process, process, process.”
“That’s my job as a coach, not to worry about voting results. This isn’t an election. This is a competition, so I’m going to focus on making my team the best team possible.”
This is all for perspective. Rankings today don’t mean much tomorrow (metaphorically the future). It just doesn’t. And not just under Lloyd, Sean Miller or Lute Olson. Early-season success doesn’t always translate into late-season success.
But national publications – websites, these days – are heaping Arizona’s praises. As they should, but they’ve also seen this before from Arizona. The history of success has continued to be there.
“I don’t care if people are talking about us or not, business as usual,” Lloyd said. “I mean, we didn’t do one thing different. (It’s about steading) the ship, help guys get better. That’s our mindset. Figure out the growth areas you want to attack on the team, and also identify our strengths and reinforce those. It was literally a normal couple days of Arizona basketball (since the Connecticut victory). I would expect the next couple days to be very normal days in Arizona basketball as well.”
Highly ranked or not.
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