Arizona, Illinois mastered international recruiting to make Final Four
Tommy Lloyd and Brad Underwood fully understand how to recruit players overseas. It's a huge part of why Arizona and Illinois are Final Four-bound
Tommy Lloyd understood the international college basketball recruiting market at Gonzaga, when he was Mark Few's right-hand man. Brad Underwood got to Illinois and has made significant investments in overseas recruiting. As a result, Arizona and Illinois are in the Final Four.
It's not all about international recruiting, but the Wildcats and Illini would not be in Indianapolis without this important piece of the puzzle. Illinois imports Brad Underwood has Croatian twins Zvonimir and Tomislav Ivisic, Montenegrin forward David Mirkovic, Serbian guard Mihailo Petrovic, and Andrej Stojakovic, the Greece-born son of former NBA player Peja Stojakovic. Arizona internationals Tommy Lloyd has three international players in his core rotation at Arizona this season: Anthony Dell'Orso from Australia, Ivan Kharchenkov from Germany, and Motiejus Krivas from Lithuania.
Several other international players are on the roster, from The Netherlands, Senegal, France, England, and Sudan. Brad Underwood before this season Brad Underwood helped build Illinois in the years before this one by landing Kofi Cockburn of Jamaica and bringing aboard Andre Curbelo from Puerto Rico. Underwood, as you can see, has moved toward Eastern Europe as the central pillar of his international recruiting strategy.
It's paying off for the Illini. Tommy Lloyd is the master of the art Tommy Lloyd's list of star international recruits is a long one, going back to his Gonzaga days. Ronny Turiaf was a Lloyd recruit.