​Former UNM basketball coach Steve Alford, who led what some consider to be the most successful periods of program history in his six seasons in Albuquerque, will retire from coaching after the coming 2026-27 season as the head coach at Nevada.Alford’s 36 year coaching career led to stops at six schools, including UNM, and 724 victories in just 1,110 games — winning more than 65% of his games. He ranks 10th among active Division I head coaches in wins and third all-time in Mountain West conference victories.At UNM, where he coached from the 2007-08 season through 2012-13, Alford’s Lobos went 155-52 (.749 win percent, better than any of his other five coaching stops). In his six seasons, the Lobos won four regular-season Mountain West championships (shared or outright), two Mountain West tournament championships and appeared in three NCAA Tournaments.“After 36 years, I feel like this is the right time to step away from the bench,” the 61-yer-old Alford said in a statement released Thursday afternoon by Nevada, where Alford is about to enter his eighth season. “(My wife) Tanya and I have loved our time in Reno, and have embraced this amazing community and built lifelong friendships.“I want to thank the University of Nevada for the opportunity to lead this program, and I am looking forward to finishing this season the right way, with a team I believe in. God has richly blessed our family in so many ways through basketball and we are very grateful. I’m excited to see God’s direction in the next chapter.”Alford joins only Rick Pitino in having coached six programs to the NCAA Tournament. Alford has also coached at Manchester (Indiana) College, Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State), Iowa and UCLA in addition to his two Mountain West.Steve and Tanya Alford have three children who all grew up in Albuquerque — sons Kory (a former Lobo walk-on) and Bryce (who like Kory is a graduate of La Cueva High School), and daughter Kayla. They have four grandchildren, who Steve Alford — stoic and intense as they can be as a coach on the court — regularly grins and melts into grandpa mode when asked about.For 16 of his coaching seasons, Craig Neal has been his top assistant — three at Iowa, six at UNM and now seven (going on eight) at Nevada. Neal took over for Alford at UNM in 2013 when Alford left to coach UCLA.The departure to UCLA for Alford after the 2013 season — one that was a No. 3 seed in the NCAA Tournament (lost to No. 14 Harvard), was ranked in the top 10 in the country at one point and had a starting roster with three future NBA players (Tony Snell, Alex Kirk and Cameron Bairstow), a MW Player of the Year (Kendall Williams) and four-year starter High Greenwood — broke the hearts of many Lobo fans who felt the trajectory of the program at that point had it headed to never before seen levels.It came less than two weeks after he and UNM had publicly announced an agreement on a 10-year contract extension to remain a Lobo.