Tuesday, April 5, 2005 | 9:14 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
As he sat down in his living room with his current players to watch some of his former ones battle North Carolina for the NCAA championship Monday, UNLV coach Lon Kruger admitted he was torn between cheering for his old team and his old friend.
He said he has been pals with Carolina coach Roy Williams for a long time. But Kruger coached Illinois from 1996-2000, and old allegiances apparently die hard.
However, he said there was no temptation to mark the occasion by putting on one of his old orange and blue neckties -- these would be the ones from Illinois, not Florida -- for old time's sake.
Old allegiances don't die that hard. Sometimes they just wind up being tucked away in a dresser drawer in a back closet.
When I asked Kruger if he still had some of that brightly colored neckwear that makes current Illinois coach Bruce Weber look like a tractor salesman as he patrols the sideline, he started laughing.
"Probably," he said. "Everyone back there has them."
Kruger is on his second coaching stop since leaving the heartland, but a trip to St. Louis for Saturday's national semifinals reminded him it hasn't been that long since he awoke to the fragrance of new mown hay.
Everywhere he turned, somebody with an orange sport jacket from the Doc Severinsen line wanted to shake his hand, chat about old times or ask about the new ones out in Las Vegas.
During Illinois' 72-57 victory against Louisville, CBS' Jim Nantz mentioned that it was Kruger who had recruited Roger Powell Jr., who scored 20 points against the Cardinals. Only Nantz talked as if it were a long time ago.
Kruger said Powell committed to Illinois just before he resigned in 2000. He also signed Nick Smith, Illinois' 7-foot-2 backup center, and recruited Luther Head and Dee Brown, two of the stars of this year's team, who were still in high school when Kruger left to coach the NBA's Atlanta Hawks.
A story on Weber in this week's Basketball Times begins with the question "Didn't Bruce Weber get to No. 1 in the nation with players that somebody else recruited?" And the writer goes on to point out that every one of Illinois' top nine players was recruited either by Kruger or his immediate successor, Bill Self, now the coach at Bucknell West -- er, Kansas.
Of course, coaching somebody else's players isn't as easy as it seems -- just ask Kruger -- and Weber deserves a lot of credit for nearly taking Illinois all the way.
Plus, Kruger said it's easy to look like a recruiting genius with all those Basketball Joneses running around places like Chicago and Joliet and Peoria who dream of staying home to play ball for the Illini.
Like Powell, for instance.
"He was a hard worker and he loved to compete," said Kruger, who recruited Powell out of Joliet High School. "And he wanted to be at Illinois."
So did Kruger, until the NBA opportunity came about. In four seasons, he compiled a solid 81-48 record and guided Illinois to the second round of the NCAA tournament in three of them. His second team in Champaign won the school's first Big Ten championship since 1984.
"It was a hard choice," he said about leaving. "I was working with such good people. (Illinois athletic director) Ron Guenther was terrific -- he reminds me of Mike Hamrick (his current boss at UNLV), very supportive, do what we need, that type of guy. A lot of the administrators were like that."
Although Monday's game was the first time Illinois had played for the NCAA title, Kruger sensed that always was the unspoken goal.
"I think everyone back there thinks like that," he said. "There's such a good recruiting base right there. I could have seen myself being there for a long time, competing for the Big Ten championship."
But then fate intervened. And Kruger had to figure out what to do with all those brilliant orange and blue neckties.
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