Tommy Lloyd and the anxious search for UNC’s next coach: what the favorites reveal about a modern vacancy

At a small kitchen table in Chapel Hill, a phone sits face-up as another update scrolls across the screen: tommy lloyd, Billy Donovan, Dusty May—names that now feel less like résumés and more like placeholders for a program’s next identity. The room is quiet, but the moment is not. A coaching vacancy at the University of North Carolina has turned ordinary hours into a cycle of waiting, checking, and recalculating what comes next.

Why is Tommy Lloyd suddenly at the center of UNC’s coaching conversation?

North Carolina is searching for its next men’s basketball head coach after it split from Hubert Davis following an NCAA Tournament exit in the first round. Into that opening, three candidates have been floated as prime options: University of Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd, Michigan head coach Dusty May, and Chicago Bulls head coach Billy Donovan.

The case for Tommy Lloyd, as it’s being discussed, rests on a straightforward pitch: winning. In five seasons at Arizona, his teams have won at least 24 games each year. Arizona has not been worse than a No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament under his watch, and it has twice been a No. 1 seed, including this season. The Wildcats’ Elite Eight run this year marked the program’s deepest postseason foray under Lloyd.

There is also a coaching lineage that matters in college basketball hiring rooms. Lloyd spent 20 years as an assistant under Mark Few at Gonzaga, helping the Bulldogs reach two national title games. And while he is described as coming from outside the “Carolina Family, ” he has connections to UNC: he coached former Tar Heel Caleb Love for two seasons, recruited and signed Henri Veesaar before Veesaar transferred to Carolina, and hired former UNC assistant Steve Robinson to his staff.

What do the odds and the buyout say about how coaching searches work now?

Even before the split with Hubert Davis was public, a prediction market labeled “North Carolina Basketball – Next Head Coach” went live on Kalshi around 1 a. m. ET on Monday, March 23—four days after UNC’s upset loss to VCU. By 9 a. m. ET that morning, Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan and Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd had surged as early favorites. The market then swung: Donovan rose to nearly a 50-50 favorite by late Tuesday, then fell back to around a 22 percent probability by the time the news became official Tuesday evening, with Lloyd at about 13 percent. The lead changed again—Lloyd overtook the top probability Wednesday evening, and Donovan retook the favored spot Thursday morning.

As of the latest snapshot in that market, Donovan sat at 30 percent and Lloyd at 25 percent. A long list followed: Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington (10 percent), Iowa State’s T. J. Otzelberger (8 percent), Alabama’s Nate Oats (7 percent), Michigan’s Dusty May (5 percent), and Iowa’s Ben McCollum (5 percent), with other names below 3 percent.

Numbers like these can feel clinical, but they point to something emotional: uncertainty. A coaching hire is no longer just an internal decision that unfolds behind closed doors. It becomes a public drama measured in percentages, swayed by timing, and shaped by how people interpret every new clue—real or imagined.

There is also a more traditional kind of arithmetic that still controls the outcome: contract terms. UNC’s pursuit of Tommy Lloyd carries an explicit cost. His contract runs through 2030, with a buyout totaling $11 million, though that number drops to $9 million on April 1. Any offer would also include the salary UNC would be paying him. That is the hard edge of the search: a decision that must satisfy fans, donors, administrators, and the coach’s own life math.

Who else is in the mix—and what are the trade-offs for UNC?

The argument for Billy Donovan begins with profile. He is the Chicago Bulls coach, and he has addressed the speculation by saying he is concentrating on the Bulls. In the prediction market, he has often been the flashier, more nationally recognizable name, which helps explain why he has repeatedly risen to the top probability.

Dusty May’s candidacy is built on a different storyline: rapid revival. He led Florida Atlantic from 2018 through 2024 and guided the Owls to a 35-4 season in 2022-23, including the program’s first Final Four appearance. FAU reached the NCAA Tournament again the following season, giving the program three all-time tournament appearances—two of them under May. In two seasons with Michigan, May’s first year produced 27 wins and a Sweet 16 appearance after the program had won 26 combined games across its previous two campaigns. This year, Michigan has a 33-3 overall record, a 19-1 mark in the Big Ten, and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

But each candidate comes with practical barriers. For May, one question is simply whether he would want to leave after only two seasons at Michigan, a program described as having a powerful athletic department, a Jordan Brand partnership, and the financial heft of the Big Ten. For Lloyd, the obstacles are cost and geography: he has spent his entire life on the West Coast—born in Washington state, played college basketball there, and began working for Gonzaga in Spokane shortly after graduating. Moving across the country would be momentous. The same human reality sits beneath every résumé line: a job offer is also a relocation, a family decision, and a bet on fit.

Brendan Marks, who covers UNC for The Athletic, framed the top tier this way: “North Carolina doesn’t have a ‘top’ candidate so much as it has a few favorites, but Tommy Lloyd and Billy Donovan are both firmly in that upper tier. ” Marks added that Lloyd “checks every box for modern success, ” while Donovan’s “NBA cache will undoubtedly improve the team’s recruiting and on-court product. ”

What solutions are on the table as UNC tries to move from speculation to a hire?

UNC’s immediate response is the search itself—evaluating candidates with very different leverage points. For Tommy Lloyd, the pathway is financial and relational: UNC would need to decide whether to absorb the buyout and what kind of long-term commitment makes sense for both sides. For Billy Donovan, the question is whether a sitting NBA coach who says he is focusing on his current team is realistically attainable. For Dusty May, the calculation is timing against momentum, both his and Michigan’s.

Meanwhile, the prediction market exists as a kind of public temperature check—fast-moving, speculative, and vulnerable to sudden swings. It is not a substitute for a hiring committee, but it reflects how modern coaching searches now unfold in full view, with the noise sometimes arriving before the official signal.

Back at that kitchen table in Chapel Hill, the screen refreshes again, and the names remain. The uncertainty is still the story. Until UNC chooses, the vacancy invites a thousand private interpretations of what the program wants to be—and whether tommy lloyd is the person who can carry that identity across the country.