Arizona earns program's first-ever NABC team academic excellence award
When Arizona basketball handed a contract extension to coach Tommy Lloyd after just a year, it was obviously an acknowledgement of the breakout 2021-22 campaign he engineered but UA leadership also made a point of commending Lloyd for bringing a level of integrity to the program.
Lloyd’s program appears to be about the right things both on and off the court.
Case in point: on Tuesday, the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) announced their 2021-22 Team Academic Excellence Award winners alongside the NABC Honors Court. For the first time in the 10-year existence of the award, the Arizona men’s basketball team received the team award.
The 2021-22 squad recorded a program record GPA for the 2nd consecutive semester ‼️#BearDown #RunWithUs pic.twitter.com/Nb3qFVNmpm
— Arizona Basketball (@ArizonaMBB) June 9, 2022
The Wildcats, after posting a team GPA north of 3.0, were one of four Pac-12 programs to earn the team accolade, joining Stanford, Utah, and USC.
Junior forward Jordan Mains was one of 2,000 players nationally across all divisions to be named to the Honors Court. The NABC Honors Court includes junior, senior and graduate student men’s basketball players who finished the 2021-22 year with a cumulative GPA of 3.2 or higher.
Arizona set a then-program record with a 3.04 team GPA in the Fall 2021 semester, with four players posting a perfect 4.0 GPA for the semester. Then in the Spring 2022 semester, the Wildcats improved that GPA to a new record of 3.14.
The complete release from the NABC can be found here.