It's sacrilege! It's heresy! (No, not hearsay! Heresy!) Why wouldn't I, a recovering IU basketball addict, want to see its favorite son return to take over the helm after Mike Davis makes his exit from the Hoosiers' coach's chair?
Why would I rather see Jack Butcher come out of retirement to coach IU than see Steve Alford make the move from Iowa to Indiana? Hell, why would I rather see them pull a Gerry Faust and pull someone from the high school ranks?
OK, I'm overstating it a little bit. But I'm not entirely sure that Alford is the answer for IU, and I'm a little wary of the thought process that states that the prodigal son's return will go a long way toward restoring IU's past glory.
1. Alford's record, especially in "big games" and conference games is ... eh. Two Big Ten tourney championships says a lot; I recall the first one, in which Iowa won four games in four days with a team that wasn't very good, which says a lot about the coach. Conversely, his overall record at Iowa is a hair over 59%, while Mike Davis' record at IU was comparable. His conference record is much worse - a 52-60 record, which is around .465. Yikes!
Alford's 135-92 overall record at Iowa isn't awful. But, like Mike Davis has learned, it's great to beat Purdue and Kentucky (though it would have served him well to beat the latter more than once), but you've also got to beat the Indiana States and Connecticuts on your schedule, and that hasn't really happened with Alford. You need to win the games you're supposed to win, and find a way to occasionally win the games you're not supposed to.
In the NCAA Tournament, here is a list of teams that Alford's Hawkeyes have defeated in his six years there:
Meanwhile, in a game that they had no business losing, Iowa fell to Northwestern State in the first round of the tournament this week. (That's correct - it's not even Northwestern, but Northwestern State!)
I will grant that the Indiana name carries a certain cachet with it, more so than Iowa does, and Alford would be able to recruit better in Bloomington than he ever could in Iowa City. (Iowans would be offended by that statement, but it's true.) But the man has not yet proven that he can win with lesser talent in the Big Ten. Sure, he turned Division III Manchester into a winner with Division III players, and he snuck what was then Missouri State into the Sweet 16 with mid-major-caliber players the year before he took the Iowa gig ... but Iowa is not Manchester or Missouri State, and Indiana is not Iowa.
2. The Pierre Pierce debacle called into question Alford's ability to recruit players of good character - which is surprising, to say the least. (Pierce, incidentally, has put his NBA aspirations on hold while he serves jail time.) I don't mind a coach sticking up for his players, but Alford carried it too far with Pierce; he cut his losses way too late.
OK - what does Alford have going for him?
1. He's not Mike Davis. Then again, who really is?
2. The Bob Knight link. (Not sure this carries the weight it used to. Dave Bliss was a Knight disciple, and look at the shambles he left the Baylor program in.)
Long story short, I'll watch IU with renewed interest should the school and Alford decide that theirs would be a match made in heaven. Don't count on me dragging my IU apparel out of the closet for a couple of years, though, until he proves that he can be successful there. Besides, as long as Bob Knight is still coaching, any other team - yes, even my formerly-beloved IU - would only rank a distant second. Probably even a third, behind Texas Tech and Gonzaga. (And, just to head *that* one off at the pass, I'm not sure Mark Few is the answer either, but he'd probably be a better choice than Alford.)
(Hey, did you know that there's a firestevealford.com? Funny, huh?)
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