The heir to the Gonzaga’s men’s basketball kingdom actually turned down his first coaching gig—an offer from the Bulldogs, no less, way back in 1999. Instead, Tommy Lloyd decided to backpack around the world, reasoning, reasonably, that life should be about more than basketball, that Spokane wasn’t the only place where he could coach and that he’d never get the chance to travel like that again.
Lloyd wrapped up the second season of his brief and unremarkable international basketball career—in Düsseldorf, Germany—that same year. He had spent the summer before back home in small-town eastern Washington, working construction for his father, saving money to buy around-the-world airplane tickets for him and his wife, Chanelle. , he called it, meaning before kids and responsibilities would overwhelm them. And before, of course, he would grab the title he most desired: coach.
For six months, the Lloyds flew, anywhere, everywhere, their possessions limited to whatever they could fit inside two overstuffed backpacks. They hit most countries in Europe, then shot over to Egypt, then to Zimbabwe. They stayed with friends, in hostels, under blankets of stars.
Eventually, they landed in Brisbane, Australia, where Lloyd had starred in ’98 for a club team so small-scale that in order to play there, he needed to coach a high school team on the side. During that season, he met a psychologist who happened to own a motel in town. Lloyd will never forget the name: the Hamilton Motor Inn.
Since the Lloyds were running out of cash, the doc did them a solid, making them managers of the hotel for something like three unexpectedly eventful weeks. Lloyd cleaned rooms, checked in guests, made poached eggs for breakfast—after asking how to, well, poach an egg—and played bartender at night. The extra cash yielded from the hotel management stint allowed the Lloyds to head to New Zealand and Hawaii before they returned home.
Chanelle noticed something else on that trip, something that would apply to the futures of both her husband and the most unlikely force in college hoops. No matter where in the world they stopped—like a show, only real life—Tommy always seemed so comfortable. Didn’t matter whether he spoke the language. Didn’t matter whether he could poach an egg. Didn’t matter whether his wallet contained no bills. He made friends by connecting with strangers from other cultures, by listening to them and trying to understand them and putting them at ease.
Lloyd, it turns out, would be gloriously wrong on all of his assumptions from before the backpacking trip. He would come to find out that there really wasn’t a whole lot more to life than basketball, as long as he counted family under the same umbrella. He would decide not to leave Spokane, nor coach anywhere else. He would also continue to travel, all over the world, to find the kinds of players that shaped Gonzaga’s rise.
Now, the Zags would not stand two victories from both their first NCAA title and the first undefeated men’s college basketball season in 45 years, had their longtime assistant not risked his career to embark on a grand international adventure. How both ended up here, on the precipice of remembered-forever greatness, tells two stories at once: the ascension of Tommy Lloyd and the evolution of the program. In many respects, it’s the same story, for Coach Mark Few’s chief lieutenant and the team that almost got dropped in ’89, made the Elite Eight in ’99 and advanced to the men’s NCAA tournament in every year since.
In terms of influence, “He’s up there,” says Travis Knight, the school’s performance coach. “We always preach ownership, and Tommy owns this program, just as much as Mark does.”
