Steve Magness@stevemagness
Arizona's was Down 7 to Purdue at halftime of the Elite Eight. Their first Final Four in 25 years slipping away.
Coach Tommy Lloyd walks to the front of the locker room and says: "Guys, the coaching staff and I are going to leave right now. You guys figure this deal out."
There wasn't some huge speech. He walked out.
Every instinct in a coaches body says to give the movie style inspirational speech. Light a fire, demand more, sound like Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday...
Lloyd did the opposite. He left 5 minutes on the clock and sent a key message to the players: This is your team. I trust you to lead it.
The veteran players took charge. They'd been through the tournament losses before, helped with emotional regulation, and reiterated that they still had a shot.
Freshman Koa Peat said afterward: "They told us to keep going. Can't get too high or too low. Just stay even-keeled."
Arizona outscored Purdue 48-26 in the second half. They had zero turnovers and shot 51.6% from the field.
Second half: Arizona outscored Purdue One.
They put on a clinic.
When asked why he did it, Lloyd said after the game:
"The most powerful thing in a team sport is a player-led program. The coach, you have to help them navigate it, but when you can get the players to own these moments, you are just so much better."
He said he'd done it four or five times this year and it worked every time.
There's a mountain of science behind Lloyd's approach
In 2003, researchers Mageau and Vallerand found autonomy-supportive coaching, giving athletes choice, acknowledging their perspective, and avoiding overt control, consistently produced more motivated, more resilient athletes.
Controlling coaching did the reverse: higher burnout and lower resilience.
This is at the heart of one of the most theories in psychology, Self-Determination Theory
When people feel autonomy, competence, and relatedness, you get the highest quality motivation.
When a coach trusts his team to figure it out and right the ship, he's handing them all three at once. It's the ultimate signal of trust when his team needed it the most.
Lloyd built a culture where the players internalized the stuff that matters.
A 2025 meta-analysis by Clare and colleagues looked at 50 studies and over 17,000 athletes.
They found that team captains had nearly twice the effect on performance as coaches did.
Coaches help set the culture and expectations. They guide good leaders, but the players look to who else is in the arena with them.
We need peer pressure in the positive direction.
Lloyd understood this. Too often, as coaches we think we need to "do something." That instinct pushes us to over control, to grip the wheel harder.
When so often, what we need to do is trust that we've guided them the best we can, and show them the trust they deserve.
Steve Kerr once did something similar with the Warriors, telling his team that he was sitting out and they were coaching the team for a game.
Build the culture. Coach the team up, giving them the skills and ability.
And then sometimes, you've just got to step back, tell them you believe in them, that it's there team.
That ownership and self-belief is the fuel of the purest motivation.
Sometimes, when we're struggling, we don't need all the answers. We just need to hear that we've already got the inside of us. And to give us that belief to go get it done...together.
-Steve
Research:
Mageau & Vallerand (2003)
"The coach–athlete relationship: a motivational model." Journal of Sports Sciences, 21(11), 883-904.
-Clare, Hardy, Roberts, Tod, & Benson (2025)
"Do Leaders Actually Influence Sports Performance? An Integrated Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses." Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 47(4), 205-222.
