More Big Ten news
 

Alford going to New Mexico
Looks like Steve thinks his only shot at getting to coach Indiana is to go back to a mid-major and make the Sweet 16.

He might be right...
 

He did just fine when he was at Missouri State (formerly Southwest Missouri State) before taking the Iowa job, so there might be something to this logic.

That was what I was thinking. Of course, 7 figures to coach a mid-major probably doesn't hurt, either.

I confess I lost track of Alford after he left, has he really performed that poorly at Iowa? There's a fair amount of squabbling at MO State about keeping Barry Hinson, Alford's successor. One on hand, he's a heck of a nice guy and his graduation rate is above 90%...on the other, we haven't been to the NCAA tournament since Steve moved on.

He's got a losing record in the conference over his career, even though the last few years have been marginally successful during the conference season. Typically, they'd have a really good non-conference season, enter the conference ranked in the top 15, and finish the conference at 6-10 or 7-9, needing a flourish in the conference tourney to get an NCAA bid. I believe he was about 5 or 6 years in before he got an at-large bid.

This year was the opposite. A 9-7 conference record couldn't make up for a horrible non-conference showing, and they didn't even get an NIT bid. Partly, I think, because his teams have underperformed in the post-season tournaments once they get beyond the Big Ten tournament.

He had serious retention problems early, and they continue to a lesser degree. And the whole Pierre Pierce fiasco backfired in his face, even though he did (in my opinion) the right thing by his player.

It was just a lot of little things that added up over 8 years.