Arizona enters new era at end of Caleb Love’s

Arizona fifth-year senior Caleb Love played his best game as a Wildcat, and it wasn’t enough to keep his team’s season going. It was instead a disappointing end to his two-year stint with the Wildcats that unfortunately sums it up rather well while also inspiring the question of what the next era for head coach Tommy Lloyd entails.

Love scored 35 points in Arizona’s 100-93 loss to Duke in the Sweet 16 on Thursday, remaining aggressive throughout to instill belief into his teammates who severely lacked confidence. This was what Love tried to do last season as well, rather valiantly by winning Pac-12 Player of the Year. But for a guy that could have led Arizona to its first Final Four in over two decades with a proper group around him, Love’s legacy in many eyes will be something he very much does not deserve.

Love was a criminally misunderstood player at Arizona. Most see the ill-advised 3s he took at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half, uncoincidentally when Duke went on the game-defining run, as what he’s known for. But Love showed his improvement and well-roundedness across two years in Tucson, developing into a true all-around star.

For a team that didn’t have any other ball-handler that could put pressure on the defense either season, Love carried the Wildcats’ offense night after night. It was more of a struggle this year, a lot of which can be attributed to how much more of a floor general he had to be at times due to a stagnant lack of growth for junior guard Jaden Bradley.

Love got better and better at those reads as the year went on, forming a great two-man game with sophomore big Henri Veesaar and finding open shooters more routinely. And while Love had his moments drifting away off the ball on defense, he was mostly a good defender. The second-round victory over Oregon included a stretch when Love rotated over defensively for verticality around the rim, then found Veesaar on a dump-off pass.

That is the stuff that has gone largely unnoticed and unrecognized, the stuff you get when you accept the questionable decision-making from time to time. The latter inspires incredibly lazy assumptions that Love is not a good teammate when his actual teammates say he is one of the best, all while he plays his ass off across every inch of the floor.

It all came together for Love on Thursday with a great, balanced scoring attack playing downhill in the way he was criticized for not doing in the past. If not for Duke’s Cooper Flagg becoming the first player ever in Men’s NCAA Tournament history to put up at least 30 points, six rebounds, seven assists, a steal and three blocks, Love would have put up the performance of the tournament thus far.

Arizona fans have been here before, by the way, with this Flagg masterclass. But it is much easier to stomach a presumptive No. 1 pick having the best game of his career so far as opposed to the definitive ceiling Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker reached for Wisconsin in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Flagg’s got much more greatness ahead of him, and Duke shot freaking 60% as the prohibitive favorites to win it all.

How does Arizona look with Caleb Love gone?

Without Love, it is hard to say what is next for the future of the Arizona program under Lloyd.

The fourth-year coach has proven capable of running an uptempo style and thrashing inferior opponents on a consistent basis, enough to rack up plenty of wins. When a style change arrived in the big dance, though, his teams underperformed for three straight years. This go-around changed that, with a Sweet 16 appearance fitting for the roster he had assembled.

And that’s the thing. We don’t really know now what to expect from what a Lloyd roster looks like.

His two best teams were all led by players brought to Tucson by Sean Miller. Lloyd deserves lots of credit for the year-to-year jumps for names like Bennedict Mathurin, Christian Koloko, Dalen Terry and Azuolas Tubelis. Players he brought in, like Oumar Ballo, Pelle Larsson and Love, improved loads as well.

But the players around Love the last two years left the star guard asked to do far too much off the bounce, where a real lack of aggression flashed time after time from his cohorts. It is a consistent enough theme to wonder if part of that is on Lloyd himself.

He’s now going to have to develop those types of players. No more Miller leftovers or Love. Let’s see who comes next.

The 2025-26 recruiting class got a big-time lift on Thursday with five-star forward Koa Peat joining top-50 recruit Dwayne Aristode and three-star forward Bryce James as the primary commits thus far. The Wildcats are still in on five-star guard Brayden Burries as well.

Most of the team could be back.

Bradley, Veesaar and sophomore wing K.J. Lewis have years of eligibility left, with the latter two guys possessing enough NBA Draft buzz to deservedly test the waters. Transfer additions Tobe Awaka and Anthony Dell’Orso will be entering their senior seasons. Freshman wing Carter Bryant is likely a one-and-done but sophomore center Motiejus Krivas was pegged for a breakout year that got cut short due to a season-ending injury in early January.

The transfer portal will surely affect some of that. But even if it does, Arizona will bring some capable bodies in, too, so talent will not be a problem.

It’ll be on how it is nurtured, and with the Wildcats now in the Big 12, they can’t coast near the top of their conference anymore. It’s retool and reload or a big-time falloff. This is when we will really learn how good of a coach Lloyd is, if he is capable of commanding the program that should not only be the program of the West Coast but one of the best in the country.

Given Arizona’s history, the standard shouldn’t be anything less.

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