Sielski: Oklahoma's Kruger has winning touch
HOUSTON - Lon Kruger is a fixer. He's the Winston Wolfe of college basketball. He's Michael Clayton without George Clooney's dreamy eyes. He's Larry Brown without the icky ethics, without the wreckage left in his wake. If he's 30 minutes away, he'll be there in 10, so athletic directors at the sport's traditional powerhouses keep his number handy. When they get in trouble, when their programs end up on probation, they know who to call.
HOUSTON - Lon Kruger is a fixer. He's the Winston Wolfe of college basketball. He's Michael Clayton without George Clooney's dreamy eyes. He's Larry Brown without the icky ethics, without the wreckage left in his wake. If he's 30 minutes away, he'll be there in 10, so athletic directors at the sport's traditional powerhouses keep his number handy. When they get in trouble, when their programs end up on probation, they know who to call.
Oklahoma was on probation when the university hired Kruger in 2011. The Sooners have won at least 20 games in each of the last four seasons, reaching the Sweet 16 in last year's NCAA tournament, reaching the Final Four this year, where they'll play Villanova on Saturday night. UNLV was on probation when it hired Kruger in 2004. The Runnin' Rebels won 30 games and advanced to the Sweet 16 in 2006-07 and reached the postseason five times over Kruger's seven years there. Illinois was on probation when it hired Kruger in 1996. The Illini won at least 20 games three times and made the NCAA tournament twice over his four years there. Florida was on probation when it hired Kruger in 1990. He coached the Gators to the Final Four in 1994. He went there from Kansas State, his alma mater, where he guided the Wildcats to the NCAA tournament in each of his four years as head coach, including a berth in the regional finals in 1988.
He's pulled off each of these reclamations without a whiff of impropriety from the NCAA - a reputation that casts him in stark relief compared with two other coaches in this Final Four, North Carolina's Roy Williams and Syracuse's Jim Boeheim. Their programs recently have been immersed in allegations of malfeasance. Yet the Sooners made it here without that controversy, and without a single McDonald's all-American on their roster.
"The minute Coach Kruger has a press conference, everybody who is aware of what's happening knows that Mr. Squeaky Clean is going to come in and recruit the right way," said Steve Henson, a longtime assistant under Kruger and a point guard for him at Kansas State. "If you look, you don't see us at the top of the recruiting rankings. We've got a roster full of guys right now who are good players and guys who we wanted, guys who we loved, we developed, and they developed themselves. And it works."
Part of the reason that Kruger, 63, has won at each of his stops has been his willingness to be flexible in the makeup of a particular team in a particular situation. At UNLV, he coached an up-tempo style and recruited accordingly because he could attract high-level athletes relative to the rest of the Mountain West Conference. He tried the same approach at Oklahoma, and the Sooners went 15-16 in his first season. "You're not going to steal the ball from NBA point guards in our league," Henson said. "We tightened things up the last couple of years, became a more compact defensive team. We can play fast. We can play slow. We can play a lot of different ways."
In a sense, then, Kruger is the anti-Jay Wright, who over his 15 years at Villanova has gradually made the program intrinsically his. The words Villanova basketball have become an oft-uttered term by Wright's players, and he recognizes that the ethos that defines that cliché - gritty basketball played by gritty kids at a small Catholic school - might not fit another program.
"There are so many aspects of Villanova that allow us to coach the way we coach," Wright said. "It's one of the reasons that we've not left. We figured that out.
"When you're a guy like Lon Kruger, Larry Brown, you can take what you do, put that into any culture. That's genius. I mean, that's incredible. It really is. He's taken five schools to the NCAA tournament, right? . . . I know we couldn't do that. I know that. You've got to know what you are, who you are."
Kruger does. He said Friday that he and his wife, Barbara, had expected UNLV to be his last head coaching job. But Joe Castiglione, Oklahoma's athletic director, "was persistent," Kruger said. "We're obviously pleased. We miss the folks in Las Vegas, but we're very, very happy with what's happening in Norman. Love the people in Norman. Look forward to finishing up there."
He said it like he meant it. He probably does. But the phone hasn't rung again yet.
@MikeSielski