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Steve Alford To Be Named Nevada Head Coach
A former Mountain West name is back in the league.
Contact/Follow @JeremyMauss & @MWCwire
Wolf Pack have found their guy.
The Nevada Wolf Pack hae moved very quickly in finding its next head coach to replace the departed Eric Musselman and it is going to be Steve Alford, according to multiple reports. The official announcement of Alford to Reno is expected to come Thursday.
Yup, that Alford who was the former Southwest Missouri State, Indiana, New Mexico, and most recently the UCLA head coach.
The Wolf Pack moved quickly to find its replacement and the candidate pool was narrowed down to Alford and Trent Johnson who was the Wolf Pack coach from 1999-2004.
Alford spent just over five at Westwood before being fired midway through this year following a few embarrassing losses. Overall, he was fairly successful at UCLA with a 124-63 record, four NCAA Tournament berths, and a trio of Swett 16 appearances, however, that was not enough to keep the higher-ups happy.
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It is intriguing for the Wolf Pack to bring a coach who has been fired and not a coach that has had an upward trajectory by winning at a lower level school.
Having said that, Alford does bring an interesting angle to Nevada and the Mountain West. Prior to taking the UCLA job, Alford spent six season at New Mexico and averaged 25 games per year and appeared in three NCAA Tournaments en route to four regular season titles and a pair of conference tournament titles.
Out of all of the candidates floating out there Alford makes sense with his experience at the high-majors, mid-majors and low-major jobs, he knows the Mountain West and even though he was fired at UCLA, he still had success and some really good teams.
The downside is the sour taste one gets by hiring a recently fired coach and it is a recycled name, but none of those mean Alford is a bad hire. If he does anything close to what he did a prior stops then this move will be considered a successful hire.
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