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“The reception in New Castle is something I’ll never, ever forget,” Alford said.

Two nights later, on Steve Alford Day in New Castle, the world’s largest high school gym filled with spectators. The ceremony was capped by Alford’s speech, in which he lamented never winning a state championship for Sam, his father and high school coach. Steve took the gold medal off his neck and put it around his father’s.

As his father had told him on the phone while the Olympic team was in San Diego, “There’s a lot of players in Indiana who can say they’ve won a state championship. Very few can say they’ve won an Olympic gold medal.”

Steve Alford was seemingly fated to be basketball royalty in Indiana.

He was born November 23, 1964, in Franklin, Indiana, the son of a coach. Soon after his second birthday, his parents, Sam and Sharan, sent Christmas cards forecasting that their son would be a Mr. Basketball in Indiana. Mom and Dad were right.

By age three, Steve was sitting on the bench at Monroe City High School, where his father was the coach. He learned to add by watching numbers on the scoreboard and to read and spell by looking at game programs and last names on the backs of uniforms. At five, he was playing in a YMCA league in Vincennes while his father coached at South Knox.