SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Steve Alford couldn't help himself.
While celebrating a high point in his career, New Mexico's coach found reason to tweak his old employers. Alford might be an Indiana legend and, currently, one of the hottest coaches in the country at the moment, but he hasn't forgotten his immediate past. Specifically, Iowa, where he spent eight up-and-down seasons before coming to New Mexico.
"If all the ingredients were in place, odds are I wouldn't have left," Alford said following Thursday night's first-round NCAA tournament win over Montana. "I saw something in [New Mexico]. They were committed to basketball on the highest level.
"We have a practice facility, have our own strength coach, have our own marketing director that we didn't have in place at my last stop."
How does that taste, Iowa? It should taste bitter. Three years after Alford left your program, it is in shambles. Attendance has dwindled, Todd Lickliter was fired Monday. It wasn't the first time Alford smacked up the Hawkeyes in the aftermath of his first NCAA tournament win since 2001.
"I grew as a coach [at Iowa]," he said, "but we had to fight through some things."
Some of those things were his fault. Alford was criticized for doggedly supporting former Iowa player Pierre Pierce who was eventually dismissed from the team in 2005 amid sexual assault allegations. Iowa never finished higher than a tie for second in the Big Ten in Alford's eight seasons.
Going from the Big Ten to the Mountain West wasn't exactly moving up the coaching ladder. Some even perceived it as getting out of town ahead of the posse. But a job is what you make it. New Mexico has won 30 games and its first NCAA tournament game in 11 years. Alford is the toast of Albuquerque where they're spending $60 million on a renovation of The Pit, New Mexico's famous basketball arena. Seven thousand folks showed up there for Selection Sunday. On Feb. 28, 1,000 folks greeted the Lobos at the airport after their win at BYU clinched the Mountain West title.
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But there's a prickly side to Alford that seems eerily inherited from his former coach. The former Indiana boy wonder, has taken more than basketball instruction from his coach, Bobby Knight. Alford, 45, has taken some of his personality. In the postgame news conference Thursday night, the coach challenged senior Ramon Martinez' assessment of Washington, Saturday's second-round opponent.
"We saw them early before the game," Martinez said. "They're a really athletic team."
Alford: "The only reason you know they're athletic is by walking through the hall [of the arena]. They're not in our hotel."
After Martinez fumbled and mumbled after the rebuke, Alford said tersely, "Let's talk about tonight's game. I'll handle Washington."
"He talks about coach Knight and says we have it easy," Martinez said later. "They didn't really have [practice] time limit back then. Sometimes coach Knight would keep them until midnight."
Among other things. However, Alford doesn't border on the abusive like his mentor. New Mexico AD Paul Krebs even used the word "charisma" to describe his coach.
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| Steve Alford know New Mexico is 'committed to basketball on the highest level.' (AP) |
"All I can do is go off my experiences," Alford said. "That's the way coach Knight recruited me. I was Mr. Basketball [in Indiana], all this, all that. I remember the first day of practice. He said, 'You're not the only Mr. Basketball on this practice floor. You're not the first one I've coached. You won't be the last one I've coached.'"
And so started a strange relationship. Knight tended to treat his best players the worst, just to set an example for the rest of the team. There aren't any McDonald's All-Americans at New Mexico. The team was upset when highlights came on TV the other day and they were referred to as "New Mexico State."
"They've got a chip on their shoulder," Alford said.
The Chips, er, Lobos play together, if unspectacularly. Martinez is the only senior. The best player is juco transfer Darington Hobson, a do-everything Evan Turner type.
"I think the first thing he ever told me was, 'You're good, but you're not that good,' Hobson said. "You have a lot of work to do.' You can tell the truth, the real ones, from the fakes."
Knight suggested that Alford look at New Mexico after a 17-14 season at Iowa in 2006-07. New Mexico president David Schmidly was interested, having hired Knight at Texas Tech. During one down stretch at Iowa, Schmidly remembered Alford flew to Lubbock to get some advice from Knight.
"So I go out to the facility and I see them there," Schmidly said. "They had been up most of the night, going over tape, talking about things."
Using Knight's endorsement and heeding his advice, Alford found a basketball-crazy town and state. In three seasons, he was won 76 games.
"I spent 15 years in the Big Ten," Krebs said. "Basketball is part of the psyche of the state. We needed somebody who is very comfortable in the media spotlight, very comfortable being the center of attention."
No problem there. Krebs knew he was getting The Full Alford when he hired him. The coach was reprimanded on March 1 after exchanging words with BYU player Jonathan Tavernari during postgame handshakes. Alford can clearly be seen on video telling Tavernari, "You're an ---hole!"
Once again, it seemed Steve Alford couldn't help himself.
