I’m not gonna bore you to death with details of my Thanksgiving Weekend, mostly because a) I barely remember anything and b) unlike Slam’s Farmer Jones, I did not have the pleasure of staying at the Steve Alford All-American Inn while driving between Indiana and Ohio.

I was psyched. My wife was not; instead of some little independent motel in the middle of nowhere, she was hoping we™d stay at a Holiday Inn or Motel 6 or some other vaguely reputable chain, since those seem less likely to end with Anthony Perkins interrupting your shower. I wanted to explain that Steve Alford would never allow a psycho-killer night manager at his hotel, but we were both tired, and she wouldn™t have appreciated the explanation. I told her just to trust me.

The Steve Alford All-American Inn is not unlike its namesake: Physically unremarkable. No frills. Unfancy. Gets the job done. It was pretty comparable to a Holiday Inn or Motel 6, except that those places generally don™t have Big Ten MVP trophies sitting on a shelf behind the check-in desk.

Here is what else it had:

-A bunch of Alford™s jerseys, from high school, college, the Olympics and the pros, displayed in frames on the lobby wall.

-A workout room with white wallpaper that has basketball-related words on it: œPost-Up, œRebound, and, yes, œSlam.

-Two hoops”height adjustable, with glass backboards and everything”in the parking lot. I would have gone out and shot on one, except we got there at 1 a.m. and left at 8 a.m., and it was freezing, and I didn™t have a ball. But otherwise.

-A giant inflatable basketball shoe in the front. About 6 feet tall, to scale, looking vaguely like a Reebok Pump. And yes, it says œLobos on the back.

While Alford’s New Mexico squad are off to a 6-0 start this year, alma mater Indiana beat Georgia Tech earlier tonight, 83-79 in Bloomington, with Hoosier freshman Eric Gordon led all scorers with 29