Friday, Nov. 9, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.
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Cheese is out. So is ribeye steak, unless there's no other option at a banquet. Cherry Garcia? Adios.
That takes care of Lon Kruger's diet.
With the start of the basketball season tonight, the question that looms over the UNLV coach is how he'll handle the strains of the job just three months after heart surgery. Heart problems run in his family, and high blood pressure runs in his profession.
Kruger, however, talks about both casually and unemotionally. He dwells on neither.
When pressed, he is guarded; he nixed the idea of being photographed while working out on an elliptical machine.
Instead, as UNLV prepares to play Montana State tonight at the Thomas & Mack Center, Kruger sounds more concerned about the Rebels ' defending pick-and-rolls than how the season's highs and lows might affect him.
"I have clean arteries now," he says, "and I'll eat better to keep them clean."
How about the operation?
"I had no pain going in, and there's been no pain since," Kruger says. "I recall discomfort for a couple of days in the hospital, but that was it. Any time there's an incision, it will be sore or tender in that area."
Now, how about new center Emmanuel Adeife's improvement in practice over the past few weeks?
Tonight, season-ticket holders might notice that Kruger has a bit more of a hitch in his gait, but he says that's more from previous back surgeries than the Aug. 2 heart surgery.
Until then it had been a sweet stretch for Kruger and the Rebels. He guided them to a 30-7 record and an appearance in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament. Fans filled up the Mack during the team's return to prominence, and the UNLV administration gave Kruger a contract extension.
Then he got the news from Dr. Joe Johnson that heart irregularities had been spotted in a routine physical exam. Kruger underwent a 4 1/2-hour procedure at St. Rose Dominican Hospital a couple of weeks before his 55th birthday.
Kruger's father, Don, had a bypass operation when he was 52 and needed a heart transplant at 59. Uncles also suffered from heart problems.
Lon Kruger says his family's heart issues can be traced to farm life in Kansas, where fatty and fried foods, heaps of butter and boatloads of gravy - and cheese - dominated the kitchen table.
Once he got to Kansas State, where he played baseball, basketball and football, Kruger improved his diet. You don't play for legendary Wildcats hoops coach Jack Hartman while feasting on gravy , fries and double cheeseburgers.
Kruger asked a doctor friend about elective bypass surgery 20 years ago. If I'm going to have this problem, why not go in and clear it up now? He was told the procedure is too invasive.
"It's a hard thing to check out," Kruger says, "until you have a problem."
Although 66-year-old Don Kruger died of skin cancer in 1998, Lon Kruger says his father's heart troubles took their toll. Anti-rejection medication wore down his immune system.
"It was a Catch-22," Lon Kruger says. "His last three or four weeks, he wasn't able to do much. It was more peaceful to pass than keep fighting."
Kruger doesn't believe he will require a heart transplant. He says he did pause when Dr. Victor Smith, who performed the operation, first mentioned "bypass." But Kruger didn't dwell on it.
"You don't have much control of what's going on," he says. "At that point, it's between the good Lord and the doctor. It's out of your hands, for sure. I was just an observer."
Five days after his operation, moving gingerly but wearing his usual smile, Kruger conducted a news conference in his office. He's nearly back to his pre surgery 45 minutes on the elliptical contraption - no cameras, please.
Smith said genetics was Kruger's main issue and discounted the stress involved with coaching.
Kruger has never blown a gasket during a game, like new S t. Louis coach Rick Majerus, Texas Tech boss Bobby Knight or a host of other hot-headed coaches .
"To him, that's not stress," says his wife, Barbara Kruger. "You prepare the team the best you can and you don't stress about things, like referee calls, you can't change."
Kruger has played two rounds of golf since the operation. Sounding like Ty Webb, the low-handicap Chevy Chase character from "Caddyshack," he says his score didn't matter, that they were more social events. He says he felt fine swinging his clubs.
"I didn't play well," Kruger says, "but that's not because of the surgery by any means."
Barbara Kruger will be forever grateful to Johnson for first noticing those blips in her husband's heart tests last summer and pressing him to undergo further testing.
She now buys only fat-free vanilla ice cream. Lon has gotten used to the flat-tasting alternative, but Barbara's eyes light up when she explains that he's allowed to layer it with chocolate syrup and sprinkle on pecans or walnuts.
Then her eyes turn glassy, as they were during those hours in the St. Rose waiting room, when talking about Lon's health.
"He has a new slate, a clean slate," Barbara Kruger says. "We're so fortunate they caught it, or he might not be here."
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