Arizona Basketball Coaching Change Following Retirement

One of the changes in the Arizona basketball coaching staff this season was bringing in Brandon Chappell as a new assistant coach under Tommy Lloyd.

Chappell took over for Steve Robinson, who had been on Arizona's coaching staff since 2021. He announced his retirement after last season, following 42 years of coaching. He had reunited with Caleb Love in Arizona after previously serving as the assistant coach for the Tar Heels from 2003 to 2021.

Across his 42 years of coaching, Robinson went to the NCAA Tournament 31 times with three national championships across eight Final Four appearances. During his time in Tucson, he helped lead Arizona to two regular season and two Pac-12 Tournament championships.

Chappell comes to Tucson after spending the past three years with Texas. While he was on the coaching staff with the Longhorns, they advanced to the NCAA Tournament all three years, averaging 23 wins a season with a trip to the Elite Eight in the 2023 season. That same year, they won the 2023 Big 12 Tournament championship and finished the year at No. 5 in the AP Poll.

He played four years at Lamar from 2003-07, where he was a two-time captain. Chappell shot 39 percent from the three-point line for his career. His best shooting season came in 2005-06 when he averaged eight points per game on 41 percent shooting both from the field and from deep.

Chappell went on to have a five-year professional playing career in the Pro-A German Basketball League for BBC Bayreuth, TV Langen and Licher Basket Baerans.

He began his coaching career back in the 2013-14 season at Armstrong State, an NCAA Division II school in Georgia. He was later a graduate assistant for two seasons at Northern Arizona University under then-NAU head coach and current Arizona associate head coach Jack Murphy. While he was part of their coaching staff, they tied the program record for wins in 2015.

He went on to spend one season as the assistant coach at Arkansas-Fort Smith on the Division II level, where he helped lead them to the regular season and conference tournament championships.

As Chappell moved primarily to the Division I level, he went back to his ama mater in Lamar, where he spent four seasons from 2017-21 on the coaching staff of Tic Price. He moved on to be an assistant coach at UNLV for one year before his stint at Texas and now in Tucson with the Wildcats.