Steve Alford was never a good fit at UCLA and is the latest
coach who failed to meet expectations of Bruins fans
Alford paid the price for not meeting UCLA's lofty standards
for success
DEC 31, 2018 | GARY PARRISH | CBS SPORTS | POST LINK
UCLA’s administration, pressured by UCLA’s fans, decided
back in 2013 that it wanted somebody other than Ben Howland to run its
basketball program. So, it didn’t matter that Howland had just enrolled the
nation’s second-best recruiting class and won an outright Pac-12 title by
playing faster than anybody else in his league – or that he’d taken the Bruins
to three Final Fours in the previous eight years. When these people make up
their mind, they make up their mind. Which was always a bad sign for Steve
Alford.
He was a not-great fit from the jump.
Everybody knew that.
But it's never been accurate when people say "UCLA
fired Ben Howland to hire Steve Alford" because that's not what UCLA did
at all. What UCLA did is fire Ben Howland because it wanted to move on from Ben
Howland, plain and simple, for better or worse. And when that decision was
made, trust me, the folks in charge, most notably athletic director Dan
Guerrero, did not think they were going to hire a coach with a 5-7 NCAA
Tournament record. But when UCLA couldn't lure Brad Stevens, Shaka Smart or any
other top-tier candidate, that's exactly what UCLA did. UCLA hired Steve
Alford. And he's lived on the hot seat pretty much ever since despite the fact
that he's one of only nine coaches to make at least three Sweet 16s in the past five seasons.
The Bruins were ranked 21st in the preseason Associated
Press poll thanks in part to another heralded recruiting class. But they've
limped to a 7-6 record featuring double-digit losses to Michigan State, North
Carolina, Cincinnati, Ohio State and Liberty. And their current four-game
losing streak that includes losses inside Pauley Pavilion to a pair of
mid-majors pushed Guerrero to make a change on New Year's Eve.
"Throughout my career, I have maintained a belief that
making a head-coaching change during a season is rarely in the best interests
of our student-athletes or program," Guerrero said. "In this case,
however, it is now clear that what is best for our current students, and for
the overall good of the program, is to make this change now. While Steve led us
to three Sweet 16 appearances, we simply have not been performing at a
consistent level -- and our struggles up to this point in the season do not
bode well for the future."
As I wrote when the hire was made, and as I mentioned on the latest episode of the CBS Sports Eye On College Basketball Podcast, I never
thought Alford-to-UCLA made sense from UCLA's perspective. But, that said, I do
believe Alford was mostly fine -- not great, but definitely fine -- in his
first five seasons that included four NCAA Tournament appearances and those
three trips to the Sweet 16. Problem was, the fans who were against him from
the jump -- and especially the ones who flew a "Fire Alford" banner
above campus just months before the enrollment of Lonzo Ball helped create a
31-win season -- never got on board. As has been the case with most, if not
all, UCLA coaches post-John Wooden, UCLA fans never thought Steve Alford was
good enough even when he was doing well. And when your fans don't care much for
you even when you're doing well, well, good luck trying to make that last.
Simply put, this was always how this would end.
And it should be a lesson for all coaches, really. If you
never win over the fans, or if you lose them at any point, you're almost always
just one bad season away from being fired provided the school can afford to do
it. Tom Crean learned this at Indiana in March 2017. Steve Alford learned it at
UCLA in December 2018. And now this Pac-12 institution will embark on another
coaching search -- once again looking for somebody who can consistently provide
what the program's rich history has its fans convinced is possible even though
UCLA's last national title came before any current UCLA players were even born.
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