By Mike Hlas

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Iowa isn’t around for the quarterfinals and beyond of the current Big Ten men’s tournament in Chicago, so let’s observe the silver anniversary of one of the Hawkeyes’ most-glorious Big Ten tourneys followed by a day in Long Island that will live in infamy — for me, anyway.

In Steve Alford’s second season as Iowa’s coach, the Hawkeyes won four games in four days in Chicago’s United Center to grab the Big Ten’s automatic berth in the NCAA tournament. They beat Alford’s alma mater in the championship game, 63-61.

Indiana was led by then-interim coach Mike Davis, appointed to that role when Bob Knight was fired in September 2000.

During the final media timeout of CBS’ telecast of that game with the game tied, commentator Billy Packer proclaimed “There will be a lot of pressure (on Indiana officials) if Iowa were to win this game. The next 3:50 will be the most-significant thing in the next 30 years of Indiana basketball as to who wins this game.”

Asked by play-by-play man Jim Nantz to interpret that, Packer said “Take it any way you want to, but there will be a lot of pressure if Iowa wins this game.”

Packer worked 34 Final Fours, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t have credibility. But his statement was hyperbolic, to put it mildly. The next 30 years?

After the game, CBS play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz asked Alford if he were interested in the Indiana job.

He dodged the question. On his weekly radio show in Iowa the next night, Alford said Nantz “lacked class” for asking the question, said he was “caught off guard” by the question, and said it was disrespectful.

In USA TODAY two days after the Iowa-Indiana game, sports media columnist Rudy Martzke’s wrote about the Alford/Davis/Indiana/Iowa story, saying Packer called Alford the day after the game.

The following day, the Hawkeyes were in Long Island for the NCAA tourney. In an NCAA press conference, which I attended in my job as the sports columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, I set up a T-ball for the coach. All he had to do was answer “Yes.” Or better yet, “Absolutely.”

“Steve,” I said, “national newspapers, national radio shows have continued talking about you and linking you to the Indiana job. Should those stories die?”

Then came the reply that nearly got a photo of my face displayed in every post office in Iowa.

“You’re from freakin’ Iowa!” Alford said angrily. “Why are you asking that? Ask Billy Packer. Billy Packer says he called me. He didn’t call me. He didn’t call me on Monday.”

If I’d have gotten a free meal from everyone who later told me I was freakin’ Iowa, I’d still be dining on their dimes.

While my fellow Iowa media members sat mute, probably thanking their deity of choice for not being me, Melissa Isaacson of the Chicago Tribune wasn’t the least bit intimidated. She asked a followup question on the Indiana subject.

“What did I just say?” Alford responded. “Well, I’m not saying anything. Are there any questions about Iowa? Jiminy Christmas!”

Jiminy Christmas, indeed. The sound bite was shown on ESPN’s SportsCenter throughout that day and night. Had the World Wide Web been a world-wide thing 25 years ago, I probably couldn’t have gone home again. I was living in an apartment at the time, and my friends in the building didn’t deserve to have their parking lot filled with rocks and garbage.

That’s an exaggeration (I think), but the hyenas were howling. The following Sunday, the weekly letters-to-the-editor feature in the Gazette’s sports section had nothing remotely kind to say about me. One urged me to look for a job in Indiana.

“The so-called sports journalists in this state haven’t learned their lesson,” wrote David Haase, then of Iowa City. “One of the reasons Lute Olson left Iowa was he couldn’t tolerate the sportswriters.

“Time warp to 2001. Steve Alford has put Iowa basketball back on the map. He has been here two years and has a good start on Duke, North Carolina, or Michigan State — a dynasty.”

The Hawkeyes proceeded to beat Creighton in the first round of the NCAA tourney, lost to favored Kentucky in the second round, and came home to find Hawkeye World excited about their future. Davis got the full-time job head coaching job at Indiana and was there until he resigned late in the 2006 season.

Indiana has hired five men’s basketball head coach since then. None were Alford.

The Hawkeyes didn’t win another NCAA tourney game in Alford’s next six years as Iowa’s coach. They were 17-14 his final season, and a lot of fans were turned off about him keeping player Pierre Pierce on his team after Pierce had been charged for sexual assault of a female UI athlete in 2002.

Alford publicly defended Pierce at the time, and arranged a “prayer meeting” with the team’s unofficial chaplain, Pierce and the victim. Alford let Pierce stay on the team after the player reached a plea deal brokered by university officials.

I wrote at the time that Alford should have helped Pierce find a new basketball home. A priest called me to tell me I was out of line for suggesting that, and in a manner that seemed more fan-like than priestly.

Pierce was charged again in 2005, and spent 11 months in prison after being found guilty of third degree burglary, false imprisonment, criminal trespassing and assault with intent to commit sexual abuse. That same priest approached me in Carver-Hawkeye Arena after a game that year to give me a brief mea culpa. I forgave him. Clearly, however, you can tell I don’t forget.

Alford resigned from his Iowa job in the spring of 2007 to become New Mexico’s coach. He had great success there in six years, then coached UCLA to three Sweet 16s in his first four years there. Sweet 16s at the time, however, weren’t good enough for Bruins fans accustomed to Final Fours and still vividly remembering its 11 national-championships.

In December 2019, Alford was fired with a 7-6 record that included a loss to Liberty. He is 61 and has been Nevada’s head coach since the 2019-20 season. The Wolf Pack have been to two NCAA tourneys with him, losing their first game both times. In their latest appearance, they blew a 17-point lead and fell to Dayton. They are 22-11 and have advanced to Friday’s semifinals of this year’s Mountain West Conference tourney.

Alford is on a 10-year contract that runs through the 2028-29 season. He’s done well for himself, coaching at six different schools over the last 35 years and winning 720 games.

What was kind of funny to me was how Iowa fans started telling me late in Alford’s tenure that I was being too soft on him.

I always wondered if any of them were some of the people who told me I was going to wreck the program by chasing him off. “We’ll never get another coach that good,” I vividly recall someone telling me in 2001.

Five months after the Long Island performance art, Alford was the guest singer of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” at a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Field. I attended, and wrote about it for the Gazette.

Alford was all smiles when he warmly greeted me in the press box. He said he jokingly asked a Cubs official if he could tell the fans he and the three Hawkeye players accompanying him were “from freakin’ Iowa.”

Instead, Alford proclaimed “The Big Ten champs are at Wrigley today!”

That was 25 years and three head coaches ago, and Iowa hasn’t been to an NCAA Sweet 16 in that time, let alone become a Duke/North Carolina/Michigan State kind of dynasty.

Editor’s note: This was previously written for my Substack, Mike Hlas – Out of Bounds.)