Steve Alford Quotations

Every person has a different view of another person's image. That's all perception. The character of a man, the integrity, that's who you are.

Christian, non-Christian, we're going to miss the mark. We're going to make mistakes. How you handle those mistakes and get more fundamentally sound spiritually in dealing with those mistakes I think have a direct impact - not only on your spiritual life, but those around you.

I'm a Christian first. I'm a family guy second. As much as I like coaching, as much as I like basketball, it's third, fourth, or fifth down the line.

I feel blessed that I had an opportunity to be in the Big Ten for four years as a player and be in the Big Ten as a coach for eight years. To get 12 years in a conference like the Big Ten - it's a first-class league with great towns and great fans.

I've said all along it's a humbling experience being at UCLA. Extremely proud, extremely blessed to be at an institution with all this tradition.

If you keep your eyes fixed on Christ, He's going to reward you.

Fans will come if you have a good product.

The majority of the Big Ten towns are college towns. The colleges are kind of what run the towns.

I don't know anything about the hotel business.

I got to work for some great administrators at great institutions, and I had an opportunity to coach great players. Iowa is no different.

I grew up in Indiana. My first four years of elementary were in the gym where Coach Wooden went to high school.

I've been in basketball a long time, and nobody is more of a competitor than I am.

It's all about persevering. You know you're going to be tested. If you keep your eyes fixed on Christ, He's going to reward you.

It's our job to put a good product out there, and fans will come. If they see a good product, a good style, fans will come.

My children see me being coach enough. I gotta make sure they see me being dad.

One of the things you don't usually mess with is happy.

Sometimes it's forgotten that players are coming to college to get a degree.

The Olympics is nothing I ever dreamed about. I dreamed about playing for Coach Knight and Indiana.

The two places that I had most imprinted in my mind and in my memory were UCLA and Indiana. To play at one and coach at the other is unbelievable.

There are very few LeBron James and Kobe Bryants.

You control what you do offensively, defensively. You're controlling who you play, how you want to play.

A freshman has only about 25% of his degree completed. They go off to play professional basketball, and to assume they will come back and get the degree done five, six, seven years later, I don't see that happening.

Everything that UCLA stands for, it's top of the food chain. So you either look at those things as burdens or you look at them as blessings. From day one, I've told my staff we're going to look at it as a blessing and do everything we can to build champions.

I just go back to my roots. I was literally born 26 miles from Martinsville High School where Coach Wooden grew up, and then my dad coached there for four years.

I never dreamed I would coach at UCLA. It was not one of those things in my coaching career I thought would happen. It's a tremendous blessing, and I'm going to make the most of it.

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would get even one play at Indiana, let alone 25 years later, walk Bruin Walk, walk UCLA where Coach Wooden built his legacy.

If we don't play well, we'll get beat. We're just not good enough to have an average to below-average night and expect to win.

Pool workouts are great, but it's not running up and down the hardwood 94 feet.

Obviously a tremendous, tremendous win for our team and our program. We're in the midst of a very special journey right now.

My focus now will be on next year's team.

Minnesota is a team who knows they've got to continue to advance to help their postseason (chances), and that's scary because they have so many seniors.

Maybe your anxiety and nerves are different. Every year it seems we're on the brink and not knowing how many games we had to win or in '01 knowing we needed to win all of them to get in. It's a different feeling this year. There's the pressure that we think we're a pretty good basketball team and winning one of the two Big Ten championships is out there.

Since those things broke we are 7-2, and five of those wins have come against top 25 opponents. There's a Big Ten title in there, and I think that tells everyone where our energy and focus has been.

Since those things broke, we're 7?2. I think that tells everyone where our focus has been.

Since we got back from Michigan State, we didn't just talk about Indiana. We started talking about this week. We've grouped these two games together.

Jabari Parker is one of the best, if not the best, I've seen on tape. He's so hard to guard. You've got to guard from 23 feet. He can shoot it, or he can go one-on-one from there. He can post. He's so fast and long.

Guys had to play different roles. Their effort while he was absent was pretty good.

From that point on, we really did a lot of good things.

From all indications he'll be ready to go.

I don't think it's ever a good thing when coaches or players get booed by their home crowd.

I don't think it's ever a good thing when coaches or players get booed from the home crowd, that's never something that is positive. As far as me getting cheers, that's happened for a long time there...that's my alma mater, that's where I played, I won a national championship there.

For whatever reason, on the road our defense has not been nearly as good as it's been at home. We're going to have to get back to that because we're really going to have to guard these last two games to give ourselves a chance.

For whatever reason that happens, you're more comfortable at home. It's a whole different mindset. Those teams that are able to go in those environments and perform well are the teams that ultimately win championships.

To come in here and lead start-to-finish, there are not a lot of people doing that.

We met at 5:30 (Sunday afternoon). And at 5:40 we no longer talked about the last game.

He was a handful no matter whom it was (guarding him). I thought Jeff made him work a little bit harder. You have to give Vincent a lot of credit but you also have to give Jeff credit for wanting that (assignment).

He's going to sit out this weekend. It's kind of a wait?and?see.

When they're all clicking like that, they're a hard group to play against.

When they're all three clicking like that, it's a hard group to beat.

He's kind of evaluating what he wants to do.

He's a load in the paint, and I think he's a big key to their team. He's great with either hand, and they really like to get it inside to him.

Hopefully, they can finish here during the last five weeks. Because it's been a special year, thus far.

He's fine. If he had to play today, he would probably have to tape it and go. But he's going to be 100 percent by Friday.

My only focus is on our team. All my efforts and passion and enthusiasm are on this Hawkeye basketball team.

That first group of Manchester players allowed me to enjoy coaching at a very young age that motivated me to do it. If it wasn't good, I might have made a career change.

Our recruiting efforts have been built on establishing positive relationships, and that was a key factor in Tyler choosing our program. I appreciate the hard work (associate head coach) Craig Neal puts forth in his recruiting efforts. Those efforts are paying dividends for the program.

I think there are some things that you feel personally, from a family standpoint, that when it hits the public it runs a whole different avenue. And it gets out there in ways that shouldn't even be out there. I'd just as soon keep the whole thing personal.

Jeff can get going. I don't think it was any particular thing that Minnesota didn't do or that we did. It was just hard for them to stop him, like it was hard for us to stop Vince.

Jeff can get going. Jeff's a very good player. And when good players get going, they're hard to stop.

Jeff Horner has imposed his will on this tournament.

Jeff Horner has imposed his will on this tournament. I thought the job he did on Brown was outstanding. What he did (against the Gophers) was no less than incredible.

Jeff played all 40 minutes plus guarded their best player. He got going, and it was hard for them to stop him just like it was hard for us to stop Vincent. I don't think there was any kind of secret on either side.

Jeff plays all 40 minutes, leads us on the offensive end, but he wants to try to do what he can to shut down their shooter and he did a decent job. He gave us a chance.

Our guys were just so much more active. We have played awfully good defense all year, but this may have been our best 40-minute effort.

Penn State got our attention at Penn State.

I'm sure Bob and I will sit down and have some talks soon. That's just something we haven't done yet.

Just having to learn to play with the brace, that's probably the most cumbersome thing. He's going to have to wear it until mid-February.

I think some people would say the numbers are the same. But with the casinos, we're fighting a trend and everyone else is going down, ... The fact is, we're not going down. Our people do go to the casinos, but they don't go up there every day.

Out of respect for me and my program, I hope all questions are directed at this year's team. For those of you that have that incredible urge to go elsewhere, out of respect for you, I have this comment: My entire focus and energy is helping my team win a Big Ten championship and get ready for the NCAA Tournament. This is my only concern.

Our three starting guards got outscored (by Iowa State's guards) 48-29. If you look at assists-to-turnovers, which has a lot to do with guard play...that was probably the difference in the game.

Our first 10 minutes out of the locker room (in the second half) is something we can't do. We let out poor offense - we had seven turnovers in that stretch - affect our defense. If you have poor offense, you need to have nasty defense.

I think he was mad at me for the four minutes he sat. But he practices this hard. You should have seen Monday's practice; he was on the floor right away. A lot of other guys would have been hesitant with the injury that he had. But he was ready to play the Drake game. That's just who Jeff is.

I woke up and I was upset. A lot of times I watch tape, and I pause it and see what's going on. That would have been a neat game to switch over and see what he's doing.

I think guys are getting more confident. We're shooting the ball better, yet the defense has stayed pretty consistent. We always felt like we could go to another level as a team if our shooting would all of a sudden kick in.

I think he'll be okay. We can get him a lot of rest heading into the weekend. Hopefully he'll be okay.

I think the guys are excited about what they've done.

It is obviously a tough game for us.

I think we are a better defending team. I still think we have a long way to go and we have done a lot of improvement in that area. That is exciting because I think we have done a pretty good job through 17 games. All-in-all it has been a great team effort in the defensive end.

I think the majority of the players who leave early aren't successful. You have more failure stories than success stories with that, but that's the nature of our game right now.

I think we came here as a four seed, maybe a five, but what we did this weekend picked us up.

It goes without being said how important he is to our offense. Him being 100 percent opens things up for us defensively.

I thought our leadership was tremendous. At the start of the game it was very good, and at the start of the second half it was very good. It's a great way to start a tournament.

It hit us at a good time. We hadn't had a break for a while. We got away from basketball Sunday, and we got away from it (Wednesday).

I thought all the teams were going to be better in our league, with maybe the exception of Illinois. I thought they'd be very good.

I thought Dee was awfully patient and then James came back in the second half and gave them a big lift. But Randle and McBride were probably the difference.

I thought we had a couple of good leads in each half and we didn't finish either. It came down to our inability to keep them off the offensive glass and turnovers. That really hurt us.

I think it's great. You never like to lose. But I think because of the loss, the guys know what they have to do. There is more sense of an urgency. They've been unified the whole time. But I sense more excitement and enthusiasm over the weekend than any kind of pressure.

I thought we were going to be pretty good. And I always thought Michigan, with everybody healthy and coming back would be tough. I don't think it's a surprise at all that the two of us are at the top of the league.

I think we probably came in here as a No. 4 seed, maybe even a No. 5. Because of our work this weekend it's pushed us into a No. 3 seed, which is obviously very special.

I thought this was a good way to start the tournament.

I wasn't impressed with many areas of our defense, which has been pretty solid all year. I don't think we defended very well.

Tyler will have an immediate impact on our team next season. He is a very talented player, but also a great person, and that is something we always look for in recruiting.

You have notebooks, so every day he's going to say things you need to write down and study and learn. The practice sessions are a little different 'cause these are walk-ons trying out.

We know regardless of who we play, it will be a difficult game.

That's what I appreciate the most about our guys. They've really got great resiliency and resolve about them. They know how to respond after a tough setback.

We just weren't able to complete this game.

That was the best he's cut all year and against a very tough defense, too. That was a complete effort out of Adam tonight.

My complete focus and efforts are on trying to help my team win a Big Ten championship. That's my only concern.

We didn't even talk about whether (Strickland) was going to be in or not be in. I think the guys did a good job of handling that, because we know we've been on the other end.

We didn't execute a lot down the stretch as far as foul shots, and the more you miss the more tense you get. It was a combination of missed free throws and not getting stops down the stretch that allowed them to get as close as they did.