UNC Basketball Possible coaches

Well I’m going to put my name in for consideration. I don’t know anything about basketball. For a measly 5 million I will take the heat this following season and they can fire me next year. I do not see us winning any games next year so prepare yourself. But think of the positive, things will only get better after that.
 

“The Tar Heels job is considered one of the very best in college basketball, and as such, UNC was prepared to offer Lloyd one of the richest contracts in the sport. Lloyd will be taking less money to remain at Arizona, though sources say his new salary will be $7.2 million annually, which would be No. 4 among public school coaches (private schools such as Duke do not disclose salary numbers). Lloyd's pay for the 2025-26 season was $4.85 million. ”

And

“Lloyd is in for the long haul at Arizona thanks to a major condition of his new deal: Lloyd will no longer report to his athletic director, Desireé Reed-Francois and will instead report to Arizona president Suresh Garimella. Lloyd's working relationship with Reed-Francois has faced serious friction in recent years due to battles of NIL and staff benefits.”
 

“The Tar Heels job is considered one of the very best in college basketball, and as such, UNC was prepared to offer Lloyd one of the richest contracts in the sport. Lloyd will be taking less money to remain at Arizona, though sources say his new salary will be $7.2 million annually, which would be No. 4 among public school coaches (private schools such as Duke do not disclose salary numbers). Lloyd's pay for the 2025-26 season was $4.85 million. ”

And

“Lloyd is in for the long haul at Arizona thanks to a major condition of his new deal: Lloyd will no longer report to his athletic director, Desireé Reed-Francois and will instead report to Arizona president Suresh Garimella. Lloyd's working relationship with Reed-Francois has faced serious friction in recent years due to battles of NIL and staff benefits.”
Maybe the football coach will want to report to the Provost
LOL
 

“The Tar Heels job is considered one of the very best in college basketball, and as such, UNC was prepared to offer Lloyd one of the richest contracts in the sport. Lloyd will be taking less money to remain at Arizona, though sources say his new salary will be $7.2 million annually, which would be No. 4 among public school coaches (private schools such as Duke do not disclose salary numbers). Lloyd's pay for the 2025-26 season was $4.85 million. ”

And

“Lloyd is in for the long haul at Arizona thanks to a major condition of his new deal: Lloyd will no longer report to his athletic director, Desireé Reed-Francois and will instead report to Arizona president Suresh Garimella. Lloyd's working relationship with Reed-Francois has faced serious friction in recent years due to battles of NIL and staff benefits.”
That sounds pretty damn dysfunctional. What happens when Arizona gets a new President who doesn't want a damn basketball coach as a direct report?
 
While May and Lloyd are the two most attractive candidates, I always thought it'd be hard to pry them loose from big programs.
This will be easy cannon fodder for other fan bases to laugh at UNC for a few days, but the reality is that it was always going to be a tough sell. Doesn’t necessarily mean that UNC is a bad job or that we should have never tried.

The logistics of how this played out does make me skeptical of our decision makers yet again. There’s no denying that there was a ton of smoke, so if this was all just a leverage play and Lloyd truly never had any interest, then that is just another strike against our PTB on an already long list of blunders.

I’m much more skeptical of Donovan than most I think, but it would still be a good “saving face” type of hire. If we can’t wrap things up neatly with him and then don’t have any sort of backup plan…. Well, I’d be very disappointed but not surprised in the least given the way UNC operates lol.
 
This will be easy cannon fodder for other fan bases to laugh at UNC for a few days, but the reality is that it was always going to be a tough sell. Doesn’t necessarily mean that UNC is a bad job or that we should have never tried.

The logistics of how this played out does make me skeptical of our decision makers yet again. There’s no denying that there was a ton of smoke, so if this was all just a leverage play and Lloyd truly never had any interest, then that is just another strike against our PTB on an already long list of blunders.

I’m much more skeptical of Donovan than most I think, but it would still be a good “saving face” type of hire. If we can’t wrap things up neatly with him and then don’t have any sort of backup plan…. Well, I’d be very disappointed but not surprised in the least given the way UNC operates lol.
Lloyd staying despite being offered more from Carolina than he ended up getting with Arizona does not seem to be a good thing. I would think if he got more money and thought it would be a better job then he would have taken it.
 
IC got their rear ends handed to them on this one, IMO. Obviously their hit rate through the years is more than stellar but they or their sources got played on this one.
Yep. It happens, but I think they definitely misread this one. From the way they were framing the situation I was expecting it to get through the end of the tournament and for Lloyd to at least genuinely hear us out, but it sure sounds like this was always a leverage play.

No shade on IC, more a poor reflection of UNC’s athletic department for getting dragged along.
 
Yep. It happens, but I think they definitely misread this one. From the way they were framing the situation I was expecting it to get through the end of the tournament and for Lloyd to at least genuinely hear us out, but it sure sounds like this was always a leverage play.

No shade on IC, more a poor reflection of UNC’s athletic department for getting dragged along.
Yea
I will not criticize IC reporting-they never promised a damn thing What they were reporting in terms of negotians etc was true
Our AD and Turnkey consultants got burned
 
Lloyd staying despite being offered more from Carolina than he ended up getting with Arizona does not seem to be a good thing. I would think if he got more money and thought it would be a better job then he would have taken it.
The optics are bad for sure. I always thought it would be tough to pull away a coach like Lloyd from their current situation though, even if we could offer more money.

My concern isn’t necessarily that Lloyd turned us down; it’s yet again with UNC’s overall approach to a coaching search. We’re about to find out one way or the other though. If we put all our eggs in one basket and just got caught flat footed, it could be ugly. If we had a legitimate backup plan and are ready to go after “smaller” names in an efficient manner, I’ll recant. I’ve said all along that I would be very open to pursuing someone like Byington and McCollum. There’s no shame in hiring an up and comer like that instead of just taking the big name or bust approach.
 
Well crap. Of the remaining coaching prospects Lloyd was about as close to a sure thing as we were going to get - he is both a current college coach and a proven winner in the NIL, easy transfer era. Nobody else remaining has his upsides, imo. Donovan is now the most likely choice, but he has a lot more ifs and doubts than Lloyd does - maybe he'll return and be successful right away, but there's reasonable room to be skeptical about that. I'm not saying that we should have kept Hubert, but I do think a lot of people who thought that top-notch candidates (Stevens, Lloyd) would just be lined up to take the UNC job have got be pretty disappointed right now.
 
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