That bad, soft defense was bad and soft no matter what UCLA tried. We don’t mean to pick on the freshmen in a game where Aaron Holiday was clearly off, but those two were the most obvious culprits in terms of the bad, soft defense and lack of focus offensively. The sort of focus and discipline you’d expect from a true conference contender was obviously absent, with Jaylen Hands hoisting bad jumper after bad jumper and both Hands and Kris Wilkes showing little desire or interest in defense all game. After shooting the ball extremely well against the Wildcats, the Bruins were much less effective offensively on Saturday, looking disjointed and selfish for the majority of the game after a stellar first ten minutes. In any case, UCLA lost to Arizona State 88-79 on the road last night, once again not completely a road sweep after pulling off a great win over Arizona on Thursday night. So, yes, Alford and Lavin aren’t literally the same person, but in terms of actual results, they’re similar enough to earn and deserve regular comparison in the minds of UCLA basketball fans. In 4.75 years at UCLA, Alford’s conference road winning percentage is just 43%. And in terms of overall conference road winning percentage, it’s no contest - while Lavin’s 57% was never going to put UCLA at the pinnacle of college basketball, he at least regularly pulled off that trope of earning a road split.
#English sweep stl full
Alford has just one opportunity remaining this year, against the Mountain schools, to match Lavin’s conference sweep total through five full years.
Through HIS first 4.75 seasons, though, Alford has completed just three sweeps on the road, and all three of them came last year with all-world Lonzo Ball leading the team. Lavin did win 57% of his conference road games through his first five seasons. Pretty bad, right? You’re not going to put yourself in a position to win the conference too often if you only sweep on the road four times in five years. Looking back at the results, through his first five seasons, Lavin completed just four Pac-12 road sweeps. If we all remember Lavin, one of the fundamental issues with his teams was the inability to get them focused game after game, which manifested on the road often as well. That’s the truly macro perspective, but in light of last night’s game, I wanted to refresh my memory of how Lavin performed in a very specific situation: completing a Pac-12 road sweep.
If you snapshot Lavin’s first five seasons, the differences are more starkly in favor of Lavin, as he had won 71% of his overall games and 70% of his games in conference, but you have to weight that a little bit since those first couple of teams were just two years removed from a national championship.
Alford has the edge in overall winning percentage at UCLA (68% to Lavin’s 65%), but in conference winning percentage, Lavin takes it, with 63.5% to Alford’s 61%. And, to an extent, you can see his point, right? Alford is a more serious-minded coach who probably knows the difference between man defense and a zone defense, likely isn’t going to be caught giving an interview on an exercise bike, and has never coined a phrase or claimed to, at least as far as I know.īut in terms of actual performance by their actual teams, the similarities are decidedly more apparent. I’m going to begin this recap a little non-traditionally, because there’s a message board topic I’d like to address, and in light of Steve Alford’s UCLA team once again not being able to pull off a Pac-12 sweep, I thought this would be an opportune moment.Īfter UCLA’s win over Arizona, a message board poster asked for fans to please stop comparing Alford to Steve Lavin.
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