Nevada men’s basketball head coach Steve Alford will retire following the 2026-27 season, concluding a 44-year collegiate, Olympic and professional basketball career. His career has given him a life story that reads like a fairytale, featuring 12 NCAA Tournament runs as a head coach, an Olympic gold medal, a $100 bet with basketball’s living god, an engagement fit for a basketball-junkie and even a small-town hotel being named in his honor.
Alford has coached the Wolf Pack since 2019, becoming the program’s winningest coach with two NCAA Tournament appearances and multiple National Invitation Tournament (NIT) bids.
But long before Reno became his home, Alford got his basketball start in Indiana, playing under his father, Sam, at New Castle High School. He regularly played in front of a sold-out crowd at one of the largest high school venues in the country. It was here, in New Castle, Indiana, that Alford earned Indiana Mr. Basketball honors before his senior season.
“By the time my junior and senior year came around, we were playing in front of 10,000 [fans] a night,” Alford said. “I worked really hard; I wanted to sell that place out. We did it seven or eight times over my junior and senior year. So every time my dad took me out [of the game], they booed him.”
Alford’s extraordinary high school career netted him the attention of Indiana University, where Hall of Fame coach Bob Knight had built his own basketball empire. It was here that Alford truly broke out as a star, leading the Hoosiers to a 1987 National Championship title as well as earning the title as the Best Player in the entire tournament. He was also voted a consensus first-team all-American in both his junior and senior seasons, leaving Bloomington as the university’s all-time leading scorer.
Alford also had the opportunity to be part of the first class of collegiate basketball players to compete with a three-point line; it was introduced during that same 1986-87 season in which he became a champion. In his lone season with the longball, Alford shot a staggering 53% from beyond the arc, making 107 threes, good for fifth in the country.
It was in his time with the university, Alford proposed in true basketball-fanatic fashion to his then-girlfriend and current wife, Tanya Frost. He had hidden her engagement ring in between the basket and the backboard on the basketball hoop at his hometown gym in New Castle. Then, while taking shots, Alford asked Frost to climb a ladder and untangle the net on the rim, as she had so many times before. Here, she found the ring, and Alford popped the question.
“I was so surprised,” Frost told the Indianapolis Star. “I was expecting him to take me out to dinner or something to give me the ring.”
The two officially tied the knot on July 11, 1987, kicking off a marriage that has lasted nearly 40 years.
Following his freshman season at Indiana, the 19-year-old Alford was selected to the 1984 U.S. Olympic basketball team, coached by Knight. The team, featuring Michael Jordan and Patrick Ewing, went undefeated over the course of the tournament en-route to a gold medal, outscoring opponents by an average of 32 points. Alford himself finished second in assists and averaged just over 10 points-per-game.
At some point during Alford’s time on the Olympic team, Jordan bet him $100 that he would not last four years in Knight’s program at Indiana; however, Alford exceeded expectations on his way to becoming an NBA draft pick.
“You know, MJ and his bets,” Alford said. “You go from wanting that $100 back in ‘84, it would have been great… Now it’s just, let me play your golf course.”
Alford’s NBA career lasted five seasons, starting in Dallas and ending in Sacramento, with a stop in the Bay Area along the way. The Dallas Mavericks selected Alford 26th overall after the Indiana Pacers passed on the Hoosier star in favor of Reggie Miller — a pick that angered many Indiana fans.
“Not only was it a much better draft choice than drafting me,” Alford told Sports Illustrated, “Reggie turned out not to be just a great pick, he turned out to be great for the state of Indiana.”
He appeared in 28 regular season games and four playoff games in his rookie year. A post-season run saw his Mavericks take the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers to seven games in the Western Conference Finals. Alford’s second season in Dallas was much shorter, though, as he was waived by the team just over a month into the regular season after averaging just 4.2 minutes-per-game.
Four days later, Alford was picked up by the Golden State Warriors, led by hall-of-fame coach Don Nelson. It was here that he would spend the rest of his season, averaging 6.3 points-per-game before losing to the Phoenix Suns in the second round in five games.
Entering free-agency that offseason, Alford elected to sign back with the Mavericks, less than a year after they had released him. He would spend the next two seasons here, only making the playoffs once (1990), and starting zero games. Following his second stint in Dallas, Alford was, once again, a free agent. This time, he joined the Sacramento Kings for training camp, where he was cut by the team before the season started.
“I got cut in my fifth year by the Kings and Tonya was pregnant with our first child. I decided I don’t want to do the overseas thing,” Alford said. “I didn’t want to keep being a journeyman, which was what I was probably going to be in the NBA. I wanted some stability… I was probably naive.”
So, Alford’s long and storied coaching career began. His first gig took him back home to the Hoosier state, in North Manchester, Indiana at Manchester College (now Manchester University). Up to that point, the men’s basketball program at Manchester had only notched five winning seasons in their entire history, though that quickly changed once Alford arrived. He led the team to three straight winning seasons, appearing in the Division III National Championship game in 1995, losing 69-55 to the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.
“We almost doubled the wins that they had in the entire century of the school,” Alford said. “So we changed that climate immediately. And President [William] Robinson got me into the game, and he married all three of our children, so he’s been a lifelong friend.”
Coaching did not come without its own learning curves for Alford either,
“We had two vans, we didn’t have a bus yet,” Alford said. “I thought I’d be coach Knight Jr. and I told the guys, ‘the vans are leaving at three.’ I got on at 2:55 and we ended up leaving [behind] our best player… So I learned that lesson, I told my staff ‘don’t ever let me go on a bus again until everybody else does.’”
Alford’s immense success at Manchester netted him the head coaching job in Springfield, Missouri, at Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State University), moving up to the Division I level. It was here that Alford enjoyed one of the greatest runs of his coaching career, advancing all the way to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament in the spring of 1999. His 12th seeded team beat both fifth-seed Wisconsin in the first round and fourth-seed Tennessee in the second round before losing to first-seed Duke in that Sweet 16.
“That was a super ride… Those are times I’ll never forget. Nobody said we could beat Wisconsin, nobody said we could beat Tennessee and we made it to the Sweet 16,” Alford said. “I think the team, and myself, believed we couldn’t beat Duke. So, we played wiffle-ball that week in preparation for that game, just to try to get our guys loose going into it.”
In 1997, all the way back in New Castle while Alford was coaching in Missouri, his old high-school teammate and assistant coach at Manchester, Kenny Cox, opened one of the more niche hotels in America. The Steve Alford All-American Inn is a 55-room hotel right off State Highway 3, bearing an enormous basketball sneaker and two hoops in front of the building.
Cox opened the business following his move back to New Castle once Alford left Manchester. Since then, the red brick hotel has stayed true to its theme, featuring plenty of jerseys bearing the longtime coach’s name to go along with his childhood basketball hoop, which hangs above the front desk. The idiosyncratic staple even changes its decorative sneaker’s color scheme depending on the team that Alford was coaching at the time. And yes, it is currently painted Wolf Pack blue.
Immediately following his incredible run, Alford left Missouri for the University of Iowa, becoming a head coach in the Big Ten Conference in his early 30s. His first season in Iowa was characterized by ups-and-downs, with his Hawkeyes winning their first game of the season against the defending national champion and number-one ranked Connecticut Huskies in New York City’s Madison Square Garden — on national television (ESPN).
“I didn’t want to back off just because we were playing the number one team in the country,” Alford told ESPN following the game. “It’s terrific. You talk about the first game, beating the number one team… We still got a long way to go, but maybe we’re a little better than we thought.”
However, that was likely the highlight of Alford’s inaugural season with Iowa, as his team played mediocre basketball the rest of the way, finishing with a record of 14-16 overall. On the other hand, the young coach’s second season with Iowa went much better as his team sported a 23-12 record, climbing all the way up to 14th ranked team, en route to a conference championship and NCAA tournament appearance.
Though Alford’s best season in Iowa City was probably his 2005-06 campaign, one in which the Hawkeyes finished with a 25-9 record, a conference championship and a three-seeded NCAA tournament bid, though they were upset in the first round by Northwestern State University.
Though his next season at Iowa would be his last, as he resigned his position following a 17-14 record in favor of the head coaching job at New Mexico University.
“Bob Bowlsby hired me, a dear friend to this day,” Alford said. “He gave me the opportunity to be in a place like Iowa, in the Big Ten. We grew there with a ton of friendships. My kids were young, it was a great place for them to grow up when they were little.”
Alford’s time at New Mexico was perhaps his most successful of all of his stops. In just six years, he finished the regular season with the best record in the Mountain West Conference four different times, made the NCAA tournament three times and won Mountain West Coach of the Year honors three different times as well. Alford quickly found success in New Mexico, going 24-9 his first season at the helm, a program record for a first-year head coach.
He then followed up his first season with an even better second one, 22-12 and finished tied for the best record in the conference with the University of Utah and Brigham Young University, though his Lobos missed the NCAA tournament after a poor performance in their conference tournament. It was in this season that Alford took home his first coach of the year award.
Though his third season in Albuquerque was probably his best, with his team finishing ranked number eight in the country to go along with Alford’s first 30-win season of his coaching career, 30-5, and an NCAA tournament appearance as a three-seed. He also took home his second coach of the year award.
“We moved [to New Mexico], and had a tremendous six year run,” Alford said. “I knew nobody in [Albuquerque], I thought, like a lot of recruits, that New Mexico was a different country… So I had to change that idea once I got there.”
Alford’s final three years at New Mexico were characterized by much of the same success that he had enjoyed throughout his entire career, notching 22, 28 and 29 wins, respectively. In both of his final two seasons, his team finished with the best record in the conference; the conference tournament championship and March Madness appearances as the fifth and third seeds, respectively.
Then, following his 2013 campaign, Alford made maybe the most consequential decision of his coaching career, electing to end his uber-successful stint at New Mexico and take the head coaching job at the University of California, Los Angeles, one of the most prominent and coveted jobs in the profession.
“This has been a very hard 48 hours. The toughest decision that I’ve had to make … maybe ever. And that’s because of how much I love this place,” Alford said. “When an opportunity presents itself like UCLA, it’s really hard to say no to that in the end.”
Alford’s first four years at UCLA were just as successful as the rest of his career had been, making the Sweet 16 three different times and developing numerous NBA prospects. Taking over a Bruin program that had just fired longtime coach Ben Howland following an early exit from the NCAA tournament, Alford went 28-9 in his first season, winning the Pac-10 conference tournament and advancing to the Sweet 16. During his more successful years with the school, Alford coached NBA veterans such as Kyle Anderson and Zach LaVine, not to mention his own son, Bryce, who also enjoyed a brief stint in the league.
Though after the early success, Alford’s program hit a rough patch, going 15-17 during his third season in Westwood. He faced growing criticism from the iconic team’s passionate fanbase. In the first week following the season, a plane towed a banner that read “Fire Alford” over the UCLA campus. The school chose to keep Alford on, though, and was rewarded with one of the best seasons of Alford’s career. His program finished with a 31-5 record led by consensus all-American freshman point guard Lonzo Ball. UCLA again reached the Sweet 16 but failed to advance past that round, a milestone Alford has still yet to achieve.
The next two seasons in Los Angeles were not as successful, though. Alford’s team went 21-12 in 2017-18 before getting bounced in the first-four portion of the NCAA tournament. Then, just 13 games into the 2018-19 season, UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero fired Alford on New Year’s Eve after a 73-58 loss to Liberty University. This was the first and only time that Alford had been fired from a coaching position.
“UCLA, you think really the pinnacle of the profession. To be five-and-a-half years there… It [was] special,” Alford said. “I loved every spot… Even the one spot that I got fired, I loved UCLA. I loved living in that area, in Calabasas.”
Then Nevada called, hiring Alford just four days after their previous coach, Eric Musselman, left the program to coach Arkansas. Since that moment, Wolf Pack fans have been the beneficiaries of six winning seasons in Alford’s seven years leading the school, to go along with two NCAA Tournament appearances.
“We knew nobody in Reno,” Alford said. “It’s definitely one of our favorite spots that we’ve been… The thing that we appreciate the most is the quality of people here. It’s just fun-loving people.”
Since the Alford’s arrival in Northern Nevada, they have become increasingly involved in the community’s Make-A-Wish program, leading the Swish For A Wish campaign, which helps raise money for the program. Tanya, specifically, has played a large role with her support for the cause, a move that has elevated Wolf Pack basketball’s role in the Reno/Sparks community.
“I love Reno because I feel like it’s a big city, but a small community, and everybody rallies together for causes,” Tanya told Nevada Sports Net. “It’s just a great community of families that serve and make a difference, and we just really love being a part of Reno and Make-A-Wish.”
In his first season leading the Pack, Alford brought home a 19-12 record, good for second in the conference, even with an almost completely new team. From there, his program got worse before it got better, going 16-10 and 13-18 in his next two seasons, respectively. Alford, now in his mid-50s, had, on numerous occasions, criticized his team’s “toughness” and his own coaching during this up and down period in Reno.
Then, Alford hit his stride with the Pack, notching 22 or more wins in three of the last four seasons to accompany two trips to the NCAA tournament. It was with Nevada’s appearance in these tournaments that Alford became the first coach in NCAA history to lead six different schools to the NCAA tournament; he has since been joined by Rick Pitino.
Nevada’s 2023-24 season saw the team claim 26 victories, even earning a spot in the national rankings (23) at one point during the season. Alford’s best season in Reno was maybe his most recent, with his team welcoming 10 new players (a symptom of the Name, Image, Likeness and Transfer Portal era) yet still winning 24 games while landing players Corey Camper Jr. and Elijah Price on the all-conference team. In the postseason, while Nevada lost to Utah State in the semi-final of the Mountain West Conference tournament, the Wolf Pack made a dazzling run in the NIT all the way to the quarterfinals before losing to the eventual champion Auburn Tigers.
Now, as Alford enters the final season of an illustrious career, he yet again faces the challenges of a revamped roster as his team welcomes 10 new players for the second straight season. This time around, Alford’s team is returning Price and do-it-all guard Vaughn Weems, two of the team’s top performers from a season ago. So, while this may be the curtain call for the college basketball staple, Alford’s final season will begin just like nearly every other season he has coached, with high expectations and NCAA tournament aspirations.
