@KUSTEVE
I am not sure that many KU fans remember this, but the chancellor that put UCLA on the map and made it become what it is today was previously KU Chancellor Franklin Murphy, born KC, KU ‘36, and Ku’'s chancellor who turned KU largely into what it is today. Murphy was a brilliant ( Phi Beta Kappa) medical doctorate physician educated at University of Pennsylvania, that Was a World War II army veteran, who came home and joined KU Med medical faculty and within a few years became its director, built it up, then became KU’s Chancellor. After a fallout with Gov. George Docking, Murphy accepted an offer from the great UC system President Clark Kerr to come and take UCLA to the next level. No telling how much greater KU would have been had Murphy stayed. Murphy is credited with turning UCLA into the world class graduate research university we know to day and launching UCLA MEDICAL SCHOOL to the elite level. He birthe the Jules Stein institute and it was Murphy who shepherded UCLA through the 1960s without the student and police violence that wracked Berkeley under Kerr and KU under Wescoe. Murphy was a great chancellor by any measure. I swear, when I once walked UCLA’s campus I could feel some kinship between KU and UCLA in the culture and design of both schools he so strongly influenced. It’s a feeling and attitude, not a look.
UCLA started humbly from a juco. It lacks the legacy snobbishness of UC and Stanford. It was born in the era of the Depression and war when many Southern Californians were displaced midwesterners. No doubt they found connections to Steve on many levels, for he is not on the surface a UCLA guy. But they value the Wooden legacy like we value Phog and they want to do right by it and the game. But doing right there is more complicated because LA IS different than Lawrence. There are more constraints to meet.
People forget that they have often outsourced for basketball coaches, between trying to hire there own… They hired LB before KU did. LB was an appeal to the old KU tradition through DEAN AND UNC. They hired Lavin, who only looked slick, but was actually a Gene Keady guy from Wooden’s Purdue and Keady was a Sutton guy and a Kay grad. Howland was hired because he had assisted for a time at UCLA, but otherwise he didn’t really have the pedigris.
If Alford can get players under the apparent embargo, he could make it. They like a smart square every now and then. And Wooden told them endlessly his game descended from Big Ten ball and from Iba. Wooden did not like Knights mouth and physical aggression with players and refs. But he thought Knight was a great coach and Alford and “Indiana” kind of person. That explains Alford and Lavin and so on.
