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  1. Rexrode wrote on Twitter that he does not feel the story took Stackhouse's quote out of context and that he did not apologize for the story. (Stadium reporter Jeff) Goodman and some of those.
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INDIANAPOLIS — Gonzaga head coach Mark Few has turned them all down when they came calling about a potential job: Indiana, Arizona, UCLA, Virginia and Michigan. There were others that also had swings and misses, but only one school truly made him even contemplate leaving Spokane.

It was back in March of 2009 and Gonzaga had just been knocked out of the NCAA Tournament by eventual national champion North Carolina in the Sweet 16. Few knew the call originating from his good friend Pat Kilkenny, who also happened to be Oregon’s interim athletic director at the time, was inevitable.

They had never discussed the job in the past, despite the fact that Few had graduated from Oregon back in 1987. But Ducks head coach Ernie Kent had just completed a season with a 2-16 league record, and Kilkenny — with the help of Nike boss and Oregon booster Phil Knight — was going to make a run at the guy who had begun to turn Gonzaga into a West Coast powerhouse.

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Few was a decade into his tenure, with 10 consecutive trips to the Big Dance. The Zags hadn’t yet gotten past the Sweet 16, but Kilkenny — from his 18-year friendship with Few dating back to when he was a graduate assistant in Spokane — knew that Few was his guy.

And he felt like he had more than just a puncher’s chance.

“I’m not going to say I thought it was a given, but I had a high confidence level for a lot of reasons,” Kilkenny told me. “He went to Oregon, his mom and dad lived there, we’re in the Pac-10 at the time, Phil Knight, Nike. Pretty darn compelling argument. I thought he’d say, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’”

They talked and decided they would each start driving, Few from Spokane and Kilkenny from Eugene. They’d call each other after a few hours and figure out where to meet when their paths got closer.

It wound up being at a rest stop right on the Columbia River in tiny Arlington, Oregon (population: 591).

They pulled up next to one another, Few with his sunglasses on to go incognito, and Kilkenny jumped into Few’s SUV with some diet soda and potato chips. Then he proceeded to try and convince Few to take the Oregon job for the next two hours.

“We had our little shindig and hashed it out,” Few said. “Pat’s a great guy, one of the greatest human beings I’ve ever known.”

“[Kilkenny’s] super-smart, super-fun,” he added. “There were some good opportunities over the years, but that was the hardest one by far. I grew up 10 minutes from Oregon, my family was still there.”

But from Kilkenny’s perspective, the pitch didn’t go all that well.

“It was a little contentious for the two hours,” Kilkenny remembered. “I believed strongly Mark would be making a huge mistake not leaving a place that didn’t have the resources that Oregon could avail him. Mark said, ‘Oregon’s never gonna get it done, I’m at a better place.’ The conversation was polarizing.”

And it ended with Few deciding to spurn his alma mater, the endless resources, Nike’s backing and a new arena that was inevitable.

“We’re so happy,” Few said looking back at the decision. “This is what fits the Few family so well. The Northwest lifestyle, fly fishing, getting out to the lake — [it] is almost a spiritual experience for part of the summer. One of the coolest things when you stay at a place as long as I have, it’s about the relationships you develop. Those guys come back and they are your guys. If you start bouncing around, you don’t have your guys anymore.”

Then Kilkenny, the man who became extremely wealthy from an insurance business and only took the AD job on an interim basis to help his alma mater, had to make that call.

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“Phil wasn’t happy,” Kilkenny said of when he informed Knight that Few wasn’t coming back home. “This is Phil’s baby, and to be rejected — Phil Knight doesn’t get rejected that often.”

Few and Kilkenny’s relationship is better than ever now, but during the year following their Arlington meeting they didn’t talk much at all. Kilkenny still blamed himself for letting Knight and the university down, but after hiring Dana Altman a year later, it got a little easier.

“All is well that ends well,” Kilkenny said. “It was a circuitous route for all of us.”

Kilkenny said he’s spent more time this season with Few than he has in a long time. His plan is to fly out Monday night to Indianapolis and hopefully watch his good friend win a national title. No, it won’t be for the Oregon Ducks, as was the hope a little more than a decade ago, but it’ll be almost as sweet if Few could pull it off from little old Gonzaga.

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“For him to win a national championship, it doesn’t surprise me. But it does surprise me he was able to do it at Gonzaga,” Kilkenny said. “Mark is on his way to the Hall of Fame and maybe gonna do something people are going to talk about generations from now,” Kilkenny said. “A movie will be made of it, and it’ll probably be a Disney movie because it’s that wholesome and people will watch that movie 50 years from now and they’ll think, ‘That’ll be made up.’ But it’s true.”

Few took this small, private, Catholic university in Spokane, Washington and didn’t just build it into a WCC power, or even a West Coast power, but a national powerhouse. And instead of bolting for more money or exposure, he turned David into Goliath.

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“I always thought we could build this into a national program,” Few said. “And it’s what’s worked for me.”

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As an Arizona alum, there was a part of me — especially after watching Michigan hire Juwan Howard a couple years ago, then Indiana hire Mike Woodson and North Carolina go with Hubert Davis in the past month — that desperately wanted Damon Stoudamire, Miles Simon or Josh Pastner to succeed Sean Miller in Tucson.

As much for the late Lute Olson as anything else.

Let’s face it: Stoudamire is more qualified for the Arizona job than any of the aforementioned coaches. He helped lead Arizona to the Final Four back in 1994. He was a lottery pick, the NBA Rookie of the Year and he spent more than a decade in the league. He then started his college coaching career immediately after retiring as a director of player development at Rice, had two stints as an assistant for Pastner at Memphis, spent a couple years as an assistant with Miller in Tucson and has been the head coach at Pacific since 2016.

Stoudamire would have been a terrific hire for Arizona. Instead, school president Dr. Robert Robbins and athletic director Dave Heeke went a different direction, which will upset many of the former Arizona players and even the fan base.

Gonzaga associate head coach Tommy Lloyd.

It didn’t upset me.

Gonzaga has been one of the best programs in the country the last couple of years, and if Mark Few has been the program’s Batman, Lloyd has been its Robin.

Lloyd was the Coach-In-Waiting in Spokane.

“Tommy has a written guarantee that he will be our next head coach,” Gonzaga athletic director Mike Roth told me. “And he has turned down numerous opportunities over the years.”

But this was one he couldn’t spurn.

Lloyd, 46, has been an assistant coach under Few for the past two decades and is best-known as arguably the premier international recruiter in college basketball. But that’s selling him short. He’s far more than just a guy who can cross the border and bring back talent.

Sure, Lloyd has lured guys like Domantas Sabonis, Kevin Pangos, Kelly Olynyk, Killian Tillie, Rui Hachimura and Joel Ayayi to Spokane. But he’s also crushed it on the transfer market, landing Brandon Clarke (San Jose State), Kyle Wiltjer (Kentucky), and Andrew Nembhard (Florida), and has been able to land top high school players such as incoming freshman guard Hunter Sallis — the Omaha native who is ranked in the top 10 nationally.

And Lloyd has taken on a ton of the coaching responsibilities over the years. All you need to do is talk to any of the former players, or watch a game, to see how involved he is in the X’s and O’s.

“He looks at the game differently than almost any coach I’ve been around in his attention to detail and how to implement his philosophies, especially with player development,” said former Zags standout Dan Dickau, now a national television analyst. “His ability to evaluate and recruit and blend international talent has really helped Gonzaga become what it has become.”

“I think Tommy is a great coach,” former Zag and current Portland Trail Blazers big man Zach Collins told me. “Very smart and he has an edge to him. He promotes toughness, hard work and understanding that things aren’t supposed to be easy. He’s very detail-oriented and fights for his guys. He expected a lot out of us.”

“He has an incredible basketball mind,” Wiltjer added. “He gets guys to compete, doesn’t waiver under pressure. He’s intense, but cool, calm and collected all the time. I think it would be safe to assume anyone in the basketball world knows a huge reason Gonzaga has had the success it has had in the past two decades is because of Tommy Lloyd.”

Lloyd has been to the NCAA Tournament every single season he’s been on the Zags staff. There have been 19 WCC regular-season titles in his 20 years on staff, four Elite Eight berths and a pair of national championship game appearances.

I understand the disappointment that Robbins didn’t go with an “Arizona guy.” I knew Olson well, the guy who built this program. I had a lengthy conversation with him a little more than a year ago at his house, months prior to him passing away, and it was clear he was frustrated with the direction of the program under Miller. He would have loved to see one of his guys at the helm.

I also comprehend the concern that Arizona, one of the best programs in the country since Olson took over in the mid 1980s, has tabbed an assistant coach.

Robbins and Heeke tried to swing for the fences. The Arizona camp reached out to Few, to Baylor’s Scott Drew, Virginia’s Tony Bennett, Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens, and even to guys like Purdue’s Matt Painter and Arkansas’ Eric Musselman.

All politely declined, except for Muss — who wound up leveraging Arizona for big money in Fayetteville. I’m not certain if Arizona could have gotten them under normal circumstances, but these aren’t ordinary times in Tucson. The program could still face another season of a postseason ban, even after self-imposing one for last year. And there will be other recruiting restrictions on the new staff for certain when the NCAA eventually hands down its punishment for the transgressions that took place under Miller.

Arizona wound up with an assistant coach, but Lloyd is no ordinary assistant coach. He’s been given far greater responsibilities by Few than most assistants. Few isn’t a guy who spends every single day on the road during the recruiting period like Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, or every night on the phone with recruits like Baylor’s Scott Drew, or all night watching film like Texas’ Chris Beard. Few has the ultimate work/family balance, and that means Lloyd has inherited a broader role than most right-hand men.

“Tommy is ready for a head coaching opportunity in my opinion,” said former Zags great Adam Morrison, who worked on the staff for a couple years and now does the team’s radio broadcasts. “He is an elite-level X and O coach, recruiter, and has a natural knack for relating to players and bringing the best out of them.”

There’s also some trepidation about Lloyd taking over with no head coaching experience. Well, back in 1999, Few didn’t have any when he took over the Gonzaga program. Jim Boeheim was elevated from his assistant spot at Syracuse in 1976 and it’s worked out. Ditto for Izzo in 1995 and he has done just fine. Kansas hired North Carolina assistant Roy Williams in 1988 and he went to four Final Fours with the Jayhawks, and Louisville took a chance on UCLA assistant Denny Crum in 1971 and he won a couple of national titles in 1980 and ’86 with the Cardinals.

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I feel badly for Stoudamire, Simon and Pastner. This was obviously their dream job.

But I don’t feel badly for the former Arizona players.

Lloyd may not have been a part of the Arizona family, but that changes now.

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