No matter what they do over the course of entire seasons, we as fans ultimately judge college basketball coaches on their NCAA tournament performances. It's not unlike debating NFL quarterbacks' legacies on whether they've won a Super Bowl — overly simplistic, but mostly unavoidable.
In college basketball's case, though, we're talking about a one-and-done event that's steeped in randomness. And UCLA's Steve Alford may be the new poster child for randomness.
On Saturday, the Bruins' second-year coach took his team to a second straight Sweet 16, this time with an 11th-seeded squad just a week removed from worrying whether it'd make the tourney at all. The crazy part: That's twice as many Sweet 16 trips as Alford made in his first 18 seasons as a Division I coach despite having led several more heralded teams to the dance.
If anything, Alford has long had a reputation as a bad NCAA tourney coach — and by extension an overrated coach in general.
After bursting on to the scene with a an improbable Sweet 16 season at Southwest Missouri State in 1999, Alford failed to reach the second weekend in six tries at Iowa (2001, '05 and '06) and New Mexico (2010, '12 and '13). That includes some particularly brutal early exits. His third-seeded 2006 Iowa team lost on a buzzer-beater to 14th seed Northwestern State. His last New Mexico team in 2013 won 30 games and earned a No. 3 seed only to lose to 14th seed Harvard.
Hence, the widespread bewilderment when UCLA AD Dan Guerrero promptly hired Alford to replace three-time Final Four coach Ben Howland.
In his first season in Westwood, the Bruins went 26-8 in the regular season, landed a No. 4 seed, then dispatched 13th seed Tulsa and 12th seed Stephen F. Austin before bowing out to No. 1 overall seed Florida. Bruins fans seemed pleased but still hardly enamored.
His second season had to this point been a much bigger struggle. Having lost stars Jordan Adams and Kyle Anderson plus NBA defector Zach LaVine, UCLA infamously scored seven points in a half against Kentucky, lost five straight games in late December and early January and finished the regular season 20-13. The Bruins were by far the most controversial at-large selection, having gone 2-8 against RPI Top 50 and 5-10 against Top 100 foes.
But following in the tradition of 2006 George Mason, 2011 VCU and many other low-seeded at-larges, UCLA promptly made the committee look smart by knocking off No. 6 seed SMU, helped in part by a controversial goaltending call on Bryce Alford's 3-point shot with under 10 seconds left. On Saturday, it withstood a 3-point shooting barrage by Cinderella aspirant UAB to throttle the Blazers 92-75 behind 28 points and 12 rebounds from Tony Parker.
So is Alford suddenly a good coach now? Was he never a bad coach to begin with? If nothing else he's the recipient of quite a few breaks in this 2015 run, first by getting in at all, then with SMU's inexplicable goaltend, and by drawing a double-digit seed in the Round of 32 for a second straight year.
You could just as easily say Alford was incredibly unlucky in his previous tries. That 2006 Iowa team lost on a ridiculous fadeaway three from the corner by Northwestern State's Jermaine Wallace. Noted hoops analytics guru Ken Pomeroy literally quantifies such endings as "luck." His 2010 New Mexico team ran into an 11th-seed Washington team that was hardly a Cinderella.
And if beating a No. 14 seed like UAB is so easy, then why couldn't Iowa State do it? Then again, Alford himself needed the win just to get to 1-2 for his career against 14 seeds.
One thing's for certain: Alford still has a long way to go to appease UCLA's perennially apathetic fan base. Sweet 16s are the bare-minimum expectation. Just ask former Bruins coach Steve Lavin, who reached the second weekend in five of his first six seasons only to get fired after the seventh.
Alford ultimately will be judged on whether he takes the Bruins to Final Fours. This team is still only halfway there, though it's already gone twice as far as most everyone outside of Westwood expected.
