Jerry Lloyd enjoyed tremendous success as a basketball player.

Northwestern High School is banking on him enjoying that same kind of success as a head coach.

Lloyd was hired as the Tigers’ boys basketball coach earlier this month and he’s excited about the opportunity.

“As a coach, all you can ask for is to have kids that will give you an honest effort and do what you ask,” said Lloyd. “Everyone told me that the kids at Northwestern fit that description perfectly.”

Lloyd had a standout high school basketball career at Whitehall High School in the 1990s. He scored over 1,500 points and was an EPC Most Valuable Player on teams that won two conference championships and a District 11 championship.

After high school, Lloyd attended Division 1 Mount St. Mary’s, where he is fifth all-time in three-pointers.

When his playing days ended, Lloyd went into coaching and served as an assistant at DeSales University on the college level, and also at Bethlehem Catholic, Easton and Northampton on the high school level. His first head coaching job came with Phillipsburg High School, where he spent the past three seasons.

As comfortable as he was at Phillipsburg, Lloyd kept an eye open for an opportunity to coach closer to home in the Lehigh Valley. When Billy Hallman stepped down at Northwestern Lehigh, Lloyd did some quick investigating and decided it was the perfect opportunity.

“I think it’s an attractive job, because like in Phillipsburg, there is a lot of community involvement and they realize that sports matter,” said Lloyd, who knows a little about Colonial League basketball through his dad, Kevin, who was an assistant at Pen Argyl. “I loved being in Phillipsburg, the kids were great, and it was a tough decision to leave, but Northwestern truly is a great opportunity for me.”

Of course, like every other high school sport, exactly what lies ahead for Lloyd and his players is a question mark. Normally, the Tigers would be engaged in camps and tournaments over the summer, but those plans might not come about this summer. How the time between now and the start of the basketball season plays out will determine Lloyd’s approach to how he coaches his new team.

“Obviously, if we can’t get on a court this summer and get time to work on things, it wouldn’t be fair to try to change a lot of things that they’ve been doing there, so we would have to scale back any changes,” said Lloyd. “If we can get together and work on some things, there are some things that I would like to do differently.”

As for what might change, Lloyd would like to use more of a motion offense and to mix up his defensive sets. Exactly what he does and how he executes things will be determined by how he assesses the player’s ability to play in those situations.

“I don’t know a lot about all of the kids, so I have to see what they can adapt to and make our plans fit the personnel that we have,” said Lloyd. “It’s going to be up to the players on how we can make these things work.”

Lloyd’s Phillipsburg team struggled through a 5-20 record this past season, but in his three years as the Stateliners coach, Lloyd finished with a 40-38 record. He takes over for Hallman, who finished his six-year stint with the Tigers at 63-75, taking his teams to three District 11 playoff berths.