David Grace is out at UCLA after five seasons as a top assistant on Steve Alford’s staff, and it is safe to say he was pretty blindsided by the news.
Grace, who had served as Alford’s lead recruiter and helped the Bruins field multiple top freshman classes during his tenure, was reported on Saturday to have been let go. After word leaked out, Grace told Ben Bolch of the LA Times that he was “very shocked” by his dismissal, which he was notified of at the end of March. He also hinted at some displeasure over the way Alford handled the situation and pointed to his recruiting successes to justify his surprise.
Spoke with David Grace. He said he was notified shortly before the Final Four that he would not be retained despite his massive recruiting success over his five years as a UCLA assistant: "To contribute the way I did and feel like this was happening just blows my mind."
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) April 14, 2018
David Grace on what Steve Alford told him about not being retained at UCLA: "He said that Dan [Guerrero] wanted to make the change and the next day I talked to Dan and Dan said he never told him to make a coaching change, so I don’t know where that came from."
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) April 14, 2018
David Grace on his dismissal at UCLA: "I was very shocked and [Alford] even said I’d done a great job and he just wanted to go a different direction. He even prayed about it in the thing. He wanted to pray about it when he was telling me I had to get another job."
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) April 14, 2018
David Grace continued on his dismissal: "This was a tremendous shock, the fact that the job I was given to be as the recruiting recruiting coordinator, four of the five years we had top-five recruiting classes. That didn’t always happen there and it’s definitely a shame."
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) April 14, 2018
Grace arrived at UCLA in 2013, the same time Alford was hired as head coach. Among the recruits he successfully lured to Westwood were Zach LaVine, Kevon Looney, Lonzo Ball, Aaron Holiday, Jaylen Hands, Kris Wilkes, and most recently, Shareef O’Neal. Should the Bruins be unable to compensate for Grace’s recruiting talents, Alford may just end up losing even more support.
