5/18/2020 11:30:00 AM | Men's Basketball, Paul Coro
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Son of top Gonzaga assistant coach grew up in basketball
By: By Paul Coro
"Ball."
The first word was the first sign of how Liam Lloyd's future would bounce.
Basketball stayed at the tip of Lloyd's tongue as he matured and spoke of the game sophisticatedly. He saw the game differently. He played the game correctly. He loved the game unconditionally, leading Lloyd on a path from Spokane, Washington, to Grand Canyon next season.
The 6-foot-5 shooting guard is a college basketball product of a college basketball environment.
Lloyd is the son of the lead Gonzaga assistant coach, Tommy, putting him amid one of the best college basketball cultures and under the roof of one of the top college basketball assistants. He learned more basketball by osmosis than most players could be coached.
"I've had a basketball in my hands ever since I've been able to remember," Lloyd said. "My first word was 'ball' because my dad just drilled it into me. That's all I've known my whole life so it's been a blessing."
It is one that works in GCU's favor as well, as his father encouraged Lloyd to blaze his trail elsewhere in college, even after starring at Gonzaga Prep.
The Lopes get more than a two-time state champion who averaged 23 points, six assists and six rebounds with 41% 3-point shooting and a 46-point game as a senior. The coaches are looking at Lloyd as a future leader because of his work ethic, hunger to win and game intuition.
"Where Liam really excels is the intangibles," GCU head coach Bryce Drew said. "I was a coach's son. He is a coach's son. So he has grown up with it his whole life. He's known the ins and outs of college basketball since a young age. He's a proven winner. He has a great feel for the game.
"Usually, they (coaches' kids) care a whole lot because they know what's at stake and they know what's on the line with every practice and every game."
Lloyd received the best coaching in Spokane with his father co-coaching his youth teams even amid Bulldogs seasons. But the influence went far beyond Lloyd's practices or games.
Liam Lloyd and his mother, Chanelle
There were basketball talks at the dinner table. A family competitiveness was fostered in any game, with a ball or cards, at home with his mom, Chanelle, and younger sisters, Sophia and Maria. After school, Lloyd and Gonzaga head coach Mark Few's sons went to the Bulldogs practices to watch or play games. He saw how players put in extra work before school or late at night. He heard pregame and postgame speeches.
"Basketball came pretty easy to him when he was little," his father, Tommy, said. "The way he would talk about basketball, I could tell he was able to see things. I thought, 'If his physical catches up with the mental, then maybe he has a chance.' Luckily, physically, he definitely got more gifts than I ever had and he worked hard to build on those and make himself into a Division I athlete."
In middle school, Lloyd remembers watching All-America third-team guard Kevin Pangos' work ethic and thinking he needed to intensify his dedication to become a college player.
"I was the test dummy for my dad," Lloyd said. "Anything he wanted to work on with guys, he wanted to work on me with before. If he liked it, he'd be like, 'OK, we can do this with them.' If it didn't work out, he'd be like, 'I guess we're not doing it.' It was fun to experiment with a lot of different stuff and I learned it a lot."
Drawing college coaches' recruitment was difficult because so many of them assumed he would play for his father at Gonzaga. Lloyd loves Gonzaga so much that it was that Bulldogs game environment that drew him to GCU, where he found another mid-major program with fanatical sold-out crowds.
His flawless fundamentals were a lure for the Lopes. They can be a stereotype for coaches' kids but Lloyd appreciates that people recognize his attention to details, from jump stops to pass techniques to defensive stance.
"The most important thing is to be a contributing player on a winning team," his father, Tommy, said. "Liam has been raised and always taught to serve your teammates on the floor. Hustling, doing the dirty work. He's a skilled player who can catch and shoot and knows how to make decisions. He's an average athlete but he knows how to play against athletes.
"He's fiery. He's not afraid. He's always had a knack his whole life for playing his best games in the biggest moments."
For the first time, Lloyd is leaving Spokane. For the first time, his father has another college basketball team to support.
Game nights will be different for the Lloyds but it carves a new identity that the Lloyds wanted. And if all goes well, Lloyd and his father will be competing in successive weeks each March at Orleans Arena for the same goal – winning their conference tournaments to go to the Big Dance.
"When the opportunity came up to go to GCU, a place where I could grow as a person and grow as a better basketball player, I felt like that would be the perfect place for me to start my own legacy," Lloyd said.
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