Geoff Alexander, like many kids growing up playing basketball, used to dream about making it to the Final Four, the pinnacle of NCAA Division I basketball.<\/p>\n
Unlike most people, Alexander actually gets to live his dream.<\/p>\n
Alexander, an assistant coach for the University of Illinois men\u2019s basketball team, will get to realize his dream this weekend.<\/p>\n
Illinois plays UConn in a national semifinal game at 5 p.m. Saturday at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n
For Alexander, it is the opportunity of a lifetime.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very excited about it,\u201d said Alexander, a former Southeastern Community College player who is in his fifth season as an assistant coach for the Fighting Illini. \u201cWhen we start each year, we talk about playing for a national championship. That\u2019s the goal and the standard. We want to put ourselves in that position to reach the pinnacle of success in our sport. It\u2019s special. We went to the Elite Eight two years ago and lost to UConn. Since then our goal has been to take that next step and get to the Final Four and get to the final.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexander and Illinois head coach Brad Underwood have a relationship that dates back over a quarter century. They first met at Western Illinois University when Underwood was an assistant coach for the Leathernecks and Alexander was a player after graduating from SCC.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went and played for Brad for two years at Western,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cWe go clear back to 1997. We have a very, very strong relationship. We have stayed in close contact ever since. I look up to him as a man, a leader and a coach. I want to try to help him be the best coach he can possibly be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexander spent two seasons as a graduate assistant coach at Western Illinois, then followed former SCC coach Joe O\u2019Brien to Idaho State.<\/p>\n
Alexander credits his two seasons at SCC under O\u2019Brien with helping him become the man and the coach he is today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose were two great years,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cJoe O\u2019Brien is an unbelievably good coach. I learned so much from him. When he took the job at Idaho State, I went and was an assistant coach for him for two years. Joe was one of the best during my years at SCC. We had a very, very talented roster. I still stay in communication with some of those guys to this day. Back then, Juco basketball was exceptionally good, not like it is today. Back then every player was really, really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alexander served three years as an assistant for Underwood at Daytona State College from 2004-06. The Falcons compiled a 70-24 record, including a 25-5 mark in 2006, and won three consecutive Mid-Florida Conference Championships. He began in the junior college ranks as an assistant at Jacksonville (Texas) College during the 2003 season.<\/p>\n
Alexander spent one year as an assistant coach at Eastern Illinois in 2012. That followed five years as an assistant at Idaho State from 2007-11, where he also served as the Bengals\u2019 recruiting coordinator.<\/p>\n
Alexander came to Illinois in 2017 after spending five seasons as an assistant coach at Evansville. During his time serving under then-head coach Marty Simmons, the Purple Aces recorded three 20-plus win seasons. Included in that run was a 25-win campaign in 2016 that equaled the most wins for Evansville in its Division I history and culminated in a Missouri Valley Conference Tournament title-game appearance. The 2015 Evansville squad, meanwhile, won 24 games, highlighted by the CollegeInsider.com<\/a> Tournament championship.<\/p>\n Alexander had a stellar playing career at Lincoln High School. Geoff played for his father, Neil, the legendary Illinois prep coach who now ranks second on the IHSA all-time coaching wins list. Geoff graduated from Lincoln in 1995 and still ranks in the program\u2019s top-10 for career points, rebounds and assists. He was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2012, along with his younger brother, Gregg. They joined their father, who was a 2004 IBCA Hall of Fame inductee.<\/p>\n He is married to the former Kiersten Coleman. The Alexanders have two daughters, Braelyn and Kinley, and a son, Jax.<\/p>\n Alexander has settled into his role as recruiting coordinator at Illinois, a position he takes pride in.<\/p>\n Illinois has seven foreign-born players on its roster this year, players Alexander helped bring to the campus in Champaign, Illinois.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done a lot of travel the last five years,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cWe have been really, really digging into the European market and bringing a lot of those guys over here. Last summer, I spent 30 days in Europe between June and July. Associate head coach Orlando Antigua I really expanded the roster.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s paid off. Those guys come from a different upbringing as far as how they play the game. They have high IQs, great skills and physical size. We have a couple 6-foot-8, 6-9 guys and a couple seven footers. They really space the floor a lot differently than we do over here by having their bigs on the perimeter.\u201d<\/p>\n This week, Alexander has been busy in preparation for Saturday\u2019s game against a red-hot UConn team which is coming off an emotional buzzer-beating win over Duke.<\/p>\n Once the game begins, it is business as usual.<\/p>\n And once the Final Four is over, it\u2019s back on the road to recruit the next wave of Fighting Illini players.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a fun group of guys. They are a lot of fun to be around and they all get along great,\u201d Alexander said. \u201cIt\u2019s been an unbelievable season. I cannot wait to get to Indianapolis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Geoff Alexander, like many kids growing up playing basketball, used to dream about making it to the Final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[7,2050,217,14785,87539,231,772,1544,66,1612],"class_list":{"0":"post-694847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-brad-underwood","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-evansville-purple-aces","12":"tag-marty-simmons","13":"tag-ncaa","14":"tag-ncaa-basketball","15":"tag-ncaab","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-team-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116337676878245832","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}