The Steve Alford We All Knew

I know all of you have been waiting for a Steve Alford update, and former Iowan Jim Giudicessi is just the guy who can handle it. Here's Giudicessi's e-mail to me:

"Ron....how is everything in Iowa? I hope the snow is all gone soon so that you can start watching your lawn grow.

"All is well here in New Mexico, but I thought it was that time of the basketball season to update all my friends back in Iowa on the success...or lack thereof...of your second-favorite former Iowa basketball coach...right behind Lute Olson...the one and only Steve 'Mr Wonderful' Alford and his New Mexico Lobos.

"Coming off two straight Mountain West Conference championships...one shared and the other outright...UNM fans had high hopes for the Lobos' 2010-11 team, but 'God's gift to coaching' has managed to coach the team down just like he did at Iowa. Their loss Wednesday night at home to UNLV was their 2nd straight home loss and 4th in a row overall. Earlier in the conference schedule they lost three in a row, including a loss to Wyoming, whose only other MWC victories are over TCU and Air Force. (Note, the TCU and Air Force basketball teams should never, ever be confused with the outstanding teams those schools put on the football field.) The only 'signature' win was at home over BYU, where the Lobos came back from 13 points down in the last 15 minutes to win. Unless the UNM manages to win the MWC postseason tournament Lobo fans can plan to spend at least part of tournament time right here in Albuquerque playing some other second division team from another conference in Alford's favorite tournament....the NIT. Oh, well, at least UNM will get to play another game or two in the $70 million dollar remodeled Pit.

"One other UNM/Alford note...Dairese Gary, the Elkhart, Indiana, point guard who had committed to play for Alford at Iowa, then changed his mind and followed Alford to New Mexico, is finishing off an outstanding college career. He has played in 125 straight games...starting 121 straight despite taking a pounding every time out. He leads the Lobos in scoring and assists... and is the Mountain West Conference all-time assists leader.

"Of course, if he'd honored his commitment to Iowa even after Alford left, he'd have quickly gotten bored playing Todd Lickliter's style of basketball and have transferred out after a year to become someone else's star player. But as someone who has no respect for Alford, but loves watching UNM play...Dairese Gary has made it worth the price of admission for the last 4-years. I would have love to have seen him play for the Hawks under Tom Davis or now under Fran McCaffery.

"Take care for now...and if you get back to New Mexico in the future...I'll buy you a margarita."

Jim Giudicessi
National Sales Manager
2 KASA Fox
Office: 505-998-9530
Cell: 505-362-8416
Fax: 505-944-0259
jgiudicessi@kasa.com
13 Broadcast Plz. SW
Albuquerque, NM 87104

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Great hearing from you, Jim. But I'm sorry Alford hasn't made it a better basketball season for you and other New Mexico followers. I guess he's not yet ready for prime-time. Evidently, Alford needs to schedule another of those one-on-one get-togethers with Bobby Knight, who coached him at Indiana. Knight would get Alford back on the straight and narrow. Say hello for me to Steve and Lute--and Bobby, too--the next time you see them. And that margarita in Albuquerque is starting to sound like an excellent idea].

 

 

 

Teams Coached By Tim Floyd and Larry Eustachy Are 1-2 In the Conference USA Standings As They Await a Feb. 16 Showdown At Hattiesburg, Miss.

By Ron Maly

All right, I'll give you one chance to name the top two teams in the Conference USA basketball standings. Yes, sir, you over there in the corner. Yes, you, the guy wearing the Cyclone sweatshirt. You were correct when you said Texas El-Paso and Southern Mississippi. Those teams, as you may have guessed, are coached by guys who are good buddies and who formerly worked at Iowa State--and won most of the time. Texas-El Paso, aka UTEP, is coached by Tim Floyd [pictured at the right]. Southern Mississippi is coached by Larry Eustachy [pictured at the left]. Floyd's team has a 6-2 record in Conference USA, and is 18-5 overall. Eustachy's Southern Miss squad is 7-3 in the league and also 18-5 for the full season. Floyd is in his first season after including coaching stops in Chicago with the NBA Bulls and in Los Angeles, where he coached Southern California, in ensuing years. He was at Iowa State from 1994-1998. He was succeeded at Ames by Eustachy, who stayed until 2003. We're all aware of the off-court problems Eustachy had at Iowa State, and he now is in his seventh season at Southern Miss. A game matching UTEP and Southern Miss will be played Feb. 16 at Hattiesburg, Miss. It figures to be a good one, and it'll have a lot riding on it.

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I admit it. I jumped on the Iowa State bandwagon early in the season when first-year coach Fred Hoiberg got his team off to a 13-2 non-conference record. I figured the preseason polls were wrong that said the Cyclones would finish in the Big 12 Conference basement. But it turns out the prognosticators knew more than some of us thought. Iowa State is last in the league with a 1-8 record and 14-10 overall. I'm very surprised. And I'm shocked with what's happened to the Iowa women's team. The Hawkeyes, too, were flying high early in the season, but now have leveled off to 5-6 in the Big Ten. While on that subject, I wish the sportswriters who cover the Cyclone men and the Iowa women would dig deeper and tell us why the teams they watch regularly aren't winning, instead of writing stories that are far too long and tell us little about what's really going on. The era of writing stories that are far too long and detail how one team or another rallied from deficits, but still came up a point or a few points short is long-gone. This is the 21st century and news travels very fast, boys. Don't waste space on stuff we already know.

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An e-mail from Kyle Ealy of Cedar Rapids:

"Ron,

"Turned on the Drake-UNI game Saturday afternoon while doing some writing for my blog. When doing one thing (writing), I'm usually not concentrating on the other (watching), but even I pushed myself away from the computer to watch the second half of the game. It was one of the better in-state games I watched in quite awhile. The players were in to it, the crowd was in to it and even the announcers were in to it. Good to see the Bullldogs pull one out...

"How about a little more love for my Green Bay Packers winning their record 13th NFL Championship? One little paragraph? C'mon!!

"Keep up the great work,"

Kyle

[RON MALY'S COMMENTS: Great hearing from you Kyle. I guess I had instructions from one of my old sports editors in the back of my mind when the Super Bowl game was over. Sometimes the guy would yell, "Keep it short!" So I guess I kept it short on the Super Bowl, didn't I?]