Alford remains legendary in Indiana

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By JEREMY FOWLER
Scripps Howard News Service
Saturday, July 21, 2007

With a basketball resting on each chair, Steve Alford shuffles back and forth, grabs and shoots.

This is a natural fit for Alford - about 15 feet from the hoop, always in motion, awaiting the inevitable swish while explaining the drill to his basketball congregation.

About 400 teenagers, who had been rambunctiously throwing Skittles in the hallway of the gym just minutes before, listen to the Indiana legend as if hearing words from on high.

Proud fathers beam from the rafters of the Franklin College gym in small-town Franklin, Ind.

"He's still the man; look at that," an adult spectator says under his breath as Alford swishes and talks with relative ease on a June afternoon. "He's one of the greatest."

Alford is conveying the importance of moving without the ball and being ready to shoot at any time. But almost everyone in the gym knows the message runs deeper.

The Hoosier dream - a love of basketball that begins in childhood and lasts until the grave - is pinned to an insatiable drive called Hard Work.

That's the Indiana way, and Alford is an Indiana boy, from his parted hair to his aw-shucks attitude to his high-topped, green-and-white Converses from high school.

To many here in the Heartland, Alford remains a legend more than two decades after creating his myth out of sweat and toughness.

Oh, Alford's gone now - off to a desert outpost 1,300 miles from home. But people here say that if Alford's past is any indication, he'll be able to duplicate the magic as he coaches the struggling University of New Mexico Lobos.

That, of course, remains to be seen: UNM has fallen on hard times. But in Indiana, where Alford's image is so pristine that the only dirt on the guy is a speeding ticket he got a week after receiving a driver's license, he remains a high apostle of hoops.

"Every time I put a credit card down in almost any restaurant in Indiana, they always ask me if I'm related to Steve," said Sean Alford, Steve's brother, a pharmaceutical rep in Indianapolis. "His name really carries here. They still love him."

The Indiana way had Alford, who preferred shooting over socializing, working for hours on the green-trimmed court of the New Castle Fieldhouse, Indiana's cathedral that holds 9,325 spectators, half the city's population.

A 16-year-old Alford took his father's car keys daily to hit the Fieldhouse for an individual session that sometimes lasted five hours.

Many close to Alford use the word obsession when describing his love for basketball. Two feet of Indiana snow didn't stop Alford from shoveling the driveway for a basketball session with snow gloves on.

All that hard work propelled a step-too-slow, inch-too-short guard like Alford - skinny, 6-foot-2, average athleticism - to elite Indiana status as one of all-time best in the basketball-rich state. Indiana's Mr. Basketball in 1983, Alford scored 37 points per game for New Castle High School in New Castle, Ind., the same town that still pays homage to its hero.

That same flick of the wrist he showed his campers helped him score 2,438 career points for the national champion Indiana Hoosiers in 1987; a school record later broken by Calbert Cheaney in 1993. Alford was the only Hoosier to win the team MVP award in each of his four years.

"As far as Indiana legends go, Larry Bird is the first name you usually hear," said 24-year-old Franklin native Justin Brown. "Then Alford's the second."

This reputation has carried Alford through the national spotlight for years, and his hiring in March gave much-needed name recognition to a UNM program that owns one NCAA Tournament appearance in the past eight years.

UNM Athletics Director Paul Krebs says Alford's pedigree, along with his coaching success in eight seasons at Iowa, merits his $975,000 annual salary.

Whatever he does as a coach might never match his Indiana fame. The wedding of Steve and Tanya Alford almost 20 years ago was televised by nearly every media outlet in Indiana.

"Around here, he can really do no wrong," said Jess Guffey, a close friend of the Alford family. "After he won the title (with the Hoosiers), he could have been elected the governor of the state by a landslide. It's almost as if it was all laid out for him."

If Alford misses New Castle, he can always phone home by calling 1-877-55STEVE.

That will put him through to the All-American Inn, where guests walk in to see a life-size poster board of Alford driving to the hoop in an Indiana uniform. On the hotel's lawn rests a 10-foot, red-and-black shoe made of Fiberglas.

The lobby also has a big locker with four jerseys hanging, each from one of Alford head coaching stops - Division-III Manchester College, Southwest Missouri State, Iowa (the outdoor shoe used to be yellow) and New Mexico.

A Bible verse - which says godliness trumps bodily training - sits framed by the check-in desk with the phrase "more than winning" above it.

Everything from green-and-black New Castle jerseys, framed box scores from Alford's days as a guard for the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, media guides from every coaching stop and newspaper articles from the 1980s decorate this Best Western-style joint owned by Alford's friend Kenny Cox.

And don't forget the All-American notepads. "Have an All-American stay," they say.

Over the top? Maybe.

A good night's sleep? Probably.

A city of about 18,000 showing love for Alford? Definitely.

"I don't know if there's anybody in that town that doesn't know what Steve Alford has done for it," said Tom Jarvis, a New Castle native. "He's our celebrity."

As long as the hoop is in the Hoosier state, Alford would feel at home shooting on it. And people in Indiana will feel at home watching his evolution, even to a place far, far away.

"He's still every kid's dream in a lot of ways," Guffey said. "The love for basketball tradition will always be here."