“You’ve Got To Figure This Out”: Leadership Autonomy In March Madness
"Coachless" Arizona men's basketball team demonstrates the power of performer ownership, trust and acountability.
SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 28: The Arizona Wildcats celebrate after defeating the Purdue Boilermakers 79-64 in the Elite Eight of the 2026 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at SAP Center on March 28, 2026 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images) Getty Images According to the morning-after news, Arizona University’s men’s basketball, a popular favorite for the NCAA tournament championship which crowns the best Division One basketball team in the nation from a starting field of sixty-eight conference champions and regular season high-flyers, abandoned its coaching presence and left it up to the team to “figure it out,” in the second half of their “Elite Eight” game against Purdue.
“Abandoned” may be too strong a term, but head coach Tommy Lloyd apparently told his team it was up to them to win the game, as they began the second half, down by seven points, and mindful of prior Arizona teams inability to get past this point in tournament competition in 2003, 2005, 2011, 2014, and 2015. According to The Athletic , Lloyd told the team: “Guys, the coaching staff and I are going to leave right now. You guys got a few minutes to talk among yourselves and kind of figure this deal out.
” He added: “Let’s go kick their ass in the second half. ” What followed, again according to the The Athletic , was startling: “No diagrams. No screaming.
No over-coaching. Just space. ” Anyone familiar with college basketball knows that “over-coaching,” is part of its charm, but this sounds like “madness.