College Basketball Podcast: If UCLA fires Steve Alford, who should replace him at the Pac-12 school?

Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander also discuss UK's win at Louisville -- and Seton Hall's ref-induced win over St. John's

By Gary Parrish

Dec 30, 2018 at 10:22 pm ET • 1 min read

Liberty beat UCLA at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday by 15 points. So that's four straight losses for Steve Alford's team that was ranked 21st in the preseason AP poll. Obviously, that's not great -- for the Bruins or Alford's future with the Bruins. So, for those reasons and more, Matt Norlander and I decided to open this episode of the CBS Sports Eye On College Basketball Podcast by discussing the bad situation in Westwood.

After that, the conversation went like this:

20:08: If UCLA does fire Alford, who might replace him? Earl Watson? Fred Hoiberg? Eric Musselman? Gregg Marshall? Rick Pitino? Or somebody else entirely? Norlander and I run through some possible candidates -- and I explain why Pitino would be awesome even if I'd be surprised if UCLA would actually do it.
35:00: Partly because of UCLA, but not completely because of UCLA, the Pac-12 had another terrible weekend. Utah got smoked at home by Nevada. Princeton beat Arizona State. Santa Clara beat Washington State. Seattle beat California. And now the Pac-12 is guaranteed to become the first power conference in two decades to have a winning percentage below .600 in the month of December. What is wrong with this league? How did it get historically bad?
44:49: Kentucky handled Louisville with ease Saturday at the Yum Center. Final score: 71-58. So that's two straight quality wins away from Rupp Arena for UK -- with the other coming against North Carolina. Are John Calipari's Wildcats fixed and ready to challenge Tennessee, Auburn and Mississippi State for the SEC title?
52:03: We spent a lot of time on Friday's podcast discussing the St. John's at Seton Hall game, and it lived up to the hype. Seton Hall won Saturday on a buzzer-beater -- but not until after the refs totally screwed St. John's with an inadvertent whistle. So the Red Storm suffered their first loss, yes. But they still looked like a team built to make the NCAA Tournament.

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