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| UCLA head coach Steve Alford speaksduring a news conference at the NCAA college basketball tournament Saturday, March 22, 2014, in San Diego. UCLA faces Stephen F. Austin in a third-round game on Sunday. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) |
For the first time in 15 years, Steve Alford is back in the Sweet Sixteen. And UCLA is paying him handsomely for getting there.
On Thursday at approximately 6:45 p.m. PDT, the Bruins’ first-year coach will vie to do what Ben Howland never could: beat Florida, a program responsible for ending three of the former coach’s last six NCAA Tournament trips.
Just getting to this game has already netted Alford $65,000 in postseason performance bonuses, a total that dwarfs the bonuses stipulated by Howland’s contract.
The seven-year extension Howland signed in 2008 paid him $25,000 for a regular-season Pac-12 championship and $20,000 for a co-championship, but did not reward him in the postseason unless he reached the Final Four (worth $50,000). A national title would have earned him an additional $100,000.
So far this season, Alford has earned $15,000 for winning the Pac-12 tournament, $25,000 for participating in the NCAA Tournament and $25,000 for advancing to the Sweet 16.
Beating the Gators (34-2) to get to the Elite Eight would mean another $25,000, while a Final Four berth piles on $50,000. A national title caps the whole load off with $75,000.
Alford makes an annual base salary of $2.6 million.
The Bruins’ run this season also helped generate a financial windfall for the Pac-12, which has three teams in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2008. That season, Washington State, Stanford and UCLA advanced to the regional semifinals, with the Bruins eventually falling to Memphis in the Final Four.
According to San Jose Mercury News columnist Jon Wilner, UCLA’s appearance this season alongside 10th-seeded Stanford and No. 1-seeded Arizona nets the conference $3.25 million. The total is distributed among all 12 league teams, though not equally.
WIDE AWAKE
The worst game of UCLA’s season is less than three weeks old, but as the Bruins roll into Memphis’ FedEx Forum this week, it feels more like three months.
On March 8, the team fell apart at Washington State, shooting a season-low 33.3 percent en route to an 18-point loss. Since then, Alford’s team has thumped four of its last five opponents by at least 17 points.
UCLA (28-8) is only a 4.5-point underdog against top overall seed Florida, according to online sportsbook Bovada.lv.
“I think Washington State was a wake-up call for us, honestly,” forward Travis Wear said. “We can’t just rely on our offense to win games. We’ve got to come out and focus on defense.”
Asked if he could have imagined UCLA in the Sweet 16 as the Bruins’ bus pulled out of Pullman, Wear paused to think.
“Coming off a loss like that, it’s hard to really think into the future,” he said. “You lose to one of the worst teams in the league. I knew that we had the talent in the locker room that — if we would take that the right way, as we have — we would be a better team for it.
“Washington State, losing that game to them has actually kind of helped us.”
BRUIN BITES
Most Bruins hadn’t had a chance to scout the Gators yet Sunday night, but sophomore Tony Parker said he was familiar with the program’s signature characteristics. The 6-foot-9 forward grew up about 330 miles north of Gainesville, and was in middle school when Florida won back-to-back titles. “When you play Florida, you know they’re going to play hard,” he said. They’re going to be able to defend really, really well.” ... Freshman Zach LaVine may have NBA potential, but he continually looks like the odd man out in a free-flowing UCLA offense. He totaled six points in his last four games, missing all three of his field goal attempts in Sunday’s win over Stephen F. Austin.
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