He has a better winning percentage than Scott Drew and is right there with Lou Henson on the all time list. Not too bad for mediocre. Its not easy to coach 900 games, either. I'd say he's above average but maybe not as good for IU as what would be expected.
Steve Alford
- Thread starter Kelly_32
- Start date
and yet it looks like they've only been blown out in 1 game, and are on a 5 game winning streak with 3-4 likely quad 1 wins among them, so they are at least trending in the right direction vs sinking like the Titanic.Currently 13-11 overall and 8-5 in conference in 4th place.
Oh, and Maryland beat them by 9 and Ohio State beat them by 7. Also lost to some school called CSUN. All at home.
Yeah, HUGE improvement over Alford. lmao
2023-24 Men's Basketball Schedule - UCLA
The official 2023-24 Men's Basketball schedule for the UCLA Bruinsuclabruins.com
I'm not comparing them to IU. It was in response that every UCLA coach should be winning the conference and winning national championships.
I know... I am comparing them to IU and that even with a worse overall record, they seem to at least be trending positively (ie their "down" year is still better than ours, and it appears there is some coaching going on!)
Rarely are any coaches elite, when first hired. Not Dean,.Not Rupp..Not Self..Not Wooden..Not K..Or Knight, Calhoun, Wright, etc..
And that's NOT the point here. Think, man.
I'm not sure how Alford would do at IU now. But at one time, I thought he was the right choice on at least one of those hires and maybe two.
I realize that Indiana fans don't like to recognize when ousted coaches actually coached well ('20 was the best football since the Rose bowl) but it'd be nice to be objective. Quick maths has Alford at a .663 win % overall and a .611 conference win % with 0 conference titles, 1 conference tournament title, and three sweet 16s. Excluding the probation years for Crean, he has a .667 win %, .583 conference win %, 2 B1G titles, 0 B1G tournament titles, and three sweet 16s. Eerily similar numbers coaching at blue bloods. I'd say the in season titles might even push me over the edge. Wake up and hire Crean.
Everyone misses the point. It’s not just how good is Alford, it’s how good is Alford at IU. It’s the combination. Alford checks boxes based on his history in the state in high school, at IU and with coach Knight that no one else does. Not Pearl or Beard or even Dusty May. Coach Woodson checked some of those boxes, with the glaring omission being a complete lack of experience coaching college basketball. Had Matt Painter gone to coach at UNC or UCLA I think he’d probably have had results similar to Alford. It’s Painter in combination with Purdue that’s made him a winner. IU doesn’t need another person who did well elsewhere like Crean or Miller. IU needs a person built for this job from day one, and that’s Alford. It’s so obvious. Purdue made a similar choice years ago and look at where they are.
In hindsight, would we have been any worse off today if we had hired Alford instead of Sampson or Crean? Maybe not. Maybe he would have done well. Do I want him today, looking at his record and being 60 years old? No way. No HS kid in Indiana cares about Steve Alford anymore, any more than they do about Mike Woodson or any other IU great who is now old enough to be their grandfather.
Self was pretty damn good at Illinois, Calipari was pretty good at UMass and Memphis. Eddie Sutton was pretty good at Arkansas. Shaka Smart was really good at VCU and is doing well at Marquette. Thad Matta was pretty good at OSU and Butler is farther ahead in the rebuild than IU. IU wanted to prove they were woke by hiring Woody and having Fife and Matta babysit, how's that working out.
Steve may have been very very effective at IU but that ship has sailed.
In the early 00s he was still a big part of basketball culture among Indiana residents, HS coaches, AAU coaches, player parents and most HS players.
Woodson is killing it in the circles of Indiana residents now.
Those days are long gone. He might’ve been relevant for a time. I’ve never been on that he was the right guy train.
Saying ”woke” has almost become a Tourette’s symptom for some people.
IU tried, and failed, to hire Brad Stevens (is hiring a white dude involved with Butler and the Celtics “woke”) and then went with the “we need an IU guy/Knight guy/Buckner‘s buddy/heal the base route” and hired Woody. Not sure how that was driven by “wokeness” but would guess you are pretty certain of it.
IU does a lot of woke stuff but the Woody hire wasn’t that. It was a basic, bad decision and crappy hire.
That Alford, as one of our greatest former stars and of coaching pedigree, was never granted so little as even a courtesy interview remains one of the tragedies in a growing list of tragedies marring our once illustrious basketball program.
Alford fell victim to the anti-Knight sentiment that permeated the ranks of the IU administration for many years. That nothing special to commemorate Coach Knight’s outstanding service to the university has been offered by the administration since his death leads me to believe these vestiges of hate still linger. Think about this…Myles Brand’s name is immortalized forever with a building on campus named in his honor. How does that one come to be, that is, for what accomplishments during his relatively short stint here?
Woody, as a decorated former player with coaching experience, was a lazy man’s “happy hire” designed for short duration. Let’s hope our next hire, in a seemingly endless list of short hires, comes in more highly energized of youthful vigor and astute COLLEGE basketball acumen.
Yep, that's the point and you nailed it.....Alford's IU ship sailed a long time ago.
Hiring Steve after CMD (instead of Sampson) would have been tough considering he was presently coaching at Iowa, and was already dealing with the P Pierce aftermath (and was slowly on his own way out at Iowa). And no way would he have come here (instead of Cream) after we blew up the program.
Alford was a bad fit at UCLA. Walton never wanted Steve there and he made it known constantly on the air and in the press. It's my own opinion, but many years ago, after the things RMK said about Wooden (cheater- which I tend to agree with), I feel Walton developed a negativity for anything and anyone coming from RMK's world. And Steve came from that IU world.
I'm not convinced Steve would have ever experienced the success at IU that we would have hoped/expected, but the urgument is moot now. Just like ass hat...er, I mean...Masshole...you know....he who shall not be named.
Why would IU grant an interview in 2001? There was no interview. Why would you hire a failed Iowa coach with his history with pierce? Some of you with your feelings and timeline issues. He was never going to be a candidate. Ever. For more reasons than one. Weird.
I suppose it all comes down to what a home run hire would be for IU. As much as I love your handle, I fear we could have a home run hire, and never get past the 5 banners we have. We could have vast improvement as a program and still be no where near a championship caliber/elite program.
I’m no insider, but i would speculate that the hiring of MW (or the package of 3 guys) was a scrambled attempt to avoid egg on the face. I think they put all their eggs in the Stevens basket, tried for Matta, and after that fell through tried saving face with the package deal.
that may be true. The Pierce incident probably sunk that ship. Hell maybe going to Iowa and bringing on Recker did it. It never seemed like a good idea, just one based on emotion and nostalgia.
that will be a tough call if Steve continues on this trajectory. I said in another post, unless he gets some teams into late March, he'll go down in history as the coach who won the most, while winning nothing at all.
Man how i long for the day when an official moratorium on saying the word "woke" goes into effect.
do you realize that the people you think are "woke" today will be calling the generations subsequent to them the same thing when they're old and grumpy, too?
my problem w its use is the binary-ness of it. You're either woke or not woke. Typical simple minded, uninteresting, uncurious, absolutist nonsense. A total human construct. You're trapped in woke, man. The people you think are woke are just living their lives laughing at you, knowing they'll be alive 30, 40 years longer than you, woke or not.
We can't get to a point where every ****ing time a non-white male is hired, it's "woke".
i would think the anti-class war, anti-identity politics folks would see the hypocrisy....
IMHO, the CMW hiring has nothing to do with checking boxes on an HR form. It was to tie up all the loose ends in the IU bball world and turn us all back into one happy family again. And bring in a coach who could use past NBA success and ties within the league as a way to lure 5 star mercenaries to come to Bloomington. Unfortunately, it's not playing out that way. Or at least, it's not translating over to 25+win seasons and playing in the 2nd weekend and beyond of the tourney.
The Sampson hiring....another story entirely.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
Sage Steele made a comment on Dan Dakich's 1430am radio show that IU just felt different. It used to feel like a family but then IU didn't want past players to come back. Your comment is right along with that. We used to be a family but we have to mend the fences which is why Woodson was hired. The problem is the results aren't there.
I never said it had to be the 2001 hire specifically. What was it about UCLA and Nevada choosing to overlook these so called “more reasons than one?” What about “scumbag” Sampson hired by Houston? Do you think their fanbase gives a toilet’s bowl full of sh*t about his excessive phone calls from a quarter-century ago? Why is the IU administration so high and mighty that they are incapable of forgiveness? Why won’t they forgive Knight’s abrasive personality from 24 years ago enough to honor him on campus in a more thoughtful way? Is it the political mindset of this bastion of higher education elitists finding themselves isolated as if a “blue” island floundering in a sea full of “red” counties within our traditionally conservative state? Could it be they are hell-bent on being statement makers to the detriment of our once illustrious athletic program? It certainly seems a possibility, don’t you think?
Like I said it was more reasons than one. They overlooked but IU won’t. Not sure why you argue this. You are over complicating things. Timing was an issue too. The rest is just babbling.
Every waking second is timing, including time to forgive and time to move on…a time for every purpose under Heaven.
Is this meme taken from when Obama was asked how he managed to ascend the political ladder from community organizer to POTUS so quickly when it took Biden all of 40 years to find his way to the top?
Just look at this board. So-called IU fans were/are vociferously against mentioning anything positive about Knight and certain players unless they're touting the national championships 'their' team won.
It's self-loathing at its finest and IU is an example of it.
Time was once a figment of an African chimpanzee’s imagination. How do we know what time it is when we don’t know what time is? Likewise, how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
The Pierce incident:
Did not get him fired from Iowa.
Did not keep New Mexico from hiring him.
Did not keep UCLA from hiring him.
Did not keep Nevada from hiring him.
To think that would be a reason for Indiana to not consider him is laughable.
Similar threads
