More Big Ten news

[Adam]

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.

[SWMOzebra]

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.

[Adam]

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

[SWMOzebra]

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.

[Adam]

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.