Kruger adds two to new staff with one opening left

Steve Guiremand

Tuesday, April 13, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

Lon Kruger added two more pieces to his assistant coaching puzzle on Monday when the school announced the hiring of Lew Hill and Mike Shepherd.

Hill, who turned 39 on Sunday and most recently was the associate head coach at Texas A&M, will join Marvin Menzies as one of Kruger's two fulltime assistants while Shepherd, a former student manager for Kruger at Kansas State, will become the director of basketball operations.

Kruger still has one more assistant coaching position to be filled and is believed to be strongly considering former Bradley head coach Jim Molinari, who is also in the running for a Division I head coaching job at Illinois-Chicago.

"We're still talking to him," Kruger said. "Certainly (the Illinois-Chicago opening) is an issue. If he has an opportunity to be a Division I head coach, he needs to follow up on that."

Hill comes to UNLV from Texas A&M where he spent the past five seasons (1998-2003). Before that, he was an assistant for four years at East Carolina while Rebels athletic director Mike Hamrick held the same title there. Hill also had coaching stops at Southwest Missouri State and South Alabama after earning all-Missouri Valley Conference honors as a senior at Wichita State.

"He's got really good credentials," Kruger said. "He's a hard worker who is highly respected in the profession."

There had been speculation in a recent Houston Chronicle article that A&M star forward Antoine Wright could be following Hill to Las Vegas. But Kruger said there was no truth to that story.

"He needs to stay where he's at," Kruger said of Wright.

This is the fifth time that Shepherd, who spent the past three years as an assistant at Northern Illinois, and Kruger have hooked up.

Shepherd was a student manager at Kansas State for Kruger and then started his coaching career in 1990 as a graduate assistant at Florida for Kruger. The two worked together again in 1996 when Kruger was the head coach at Illinois. Shepherd also was a scout with the Atlanta Hawks when Kruger was the head coach of the NBA team.

"He does a good job and is very organized," Kruger said.