Repeated on tape, not the floor

By Rob Miech

Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 | 2 a.m.

UNLV reserve point guard Marcus Lawrence gets the ball stripped from him by a Golden Gopher and then he commits a quick foul trying to get it back.

In the waning seconds, Lawrence throws an errant pass. It’s a comfortable victory for the Rebels over a solid Minnesota team whose coach, Tubby Smith, has won a national championship.

Lawrence, however, knows his mistakes will be played, and replayed, and replayed again by coach Lon Kruger in a video review session of the game.

He walks out of the UNLV dressing room, down a tunnel to the floor, with his head bowed. His gaudy assists-to-turnovers ratio of nearly 10-1, which led the nation, took a hit.

The coach’s wife, Barb Kruger, consoles him with a hug.

“I’m so upset with myself,” Lawrence says. “Last season we didn’t turn it over much and we went far. Coach emphasizes that every possession counts.”

Kruger stresses that in video sessions that are the foundation of his philosophy. Video, or film when Kruger played for the demanding Jack Hartman at Kansas State, is brutally honest.

Mess up and everyone will see it, and not just once. UNLV players call those sessions The Rewind.

Play it again, Lon.

“We use it in a positive way,” Kruger says. “It’s a good teaching tool.”

Guys play loose, says senior guard Curtis Terry, but they know that every error will be seen. Three and four times, says junior guard Wink Adams, who was a video session regular when he was a freshman.

“He calls you out, but not just to put you out there,” Adams says. “It shows what you need to work on. It’s good he does that.”

For a second consecutive season UNLV, 14-4 overall and 3-1 in the Mountain West Conference, is among the best programs in the country at taking pride in each possession.

The Rebels committed only two miscues Wednesday night in their 78-71 victory over Wyoming to trim their average turnovers and national ranking in the statistic to 10.889 and fifth. In January 2006, they were just as smart on offense in a victory over the Cowboys in Laramie, Wyo.

Last season, when UNLV went to the Sweet 16, it turned the ball over a paltry 11.1 times a game, the seventh-lowest figure in the country.

Over the past two seasons, UNLV is 36-6 when it commits fewer turnovers than its foes.

Kruger is an effective practitioner of video reinforcement, in either the team’s locker room inside the Thomas & Mack Center or the one next to the Cox Pavilion practice court, because he once sat in the same seat as Lawrence, Terry, Adams and the rest of the Rebels.

Hartman coached the same way at Kansas State when Kruger, now 55, was a Wildcat. And Hartman’s mistakes as a player were highlighted just as frequently on film when he played for Hank Iba at Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State.

Known as “The Iron Duke of Defense,” Iba was one of the game’s toughest coaches, whose majestic family tree includes Adolph Rupp, John Wooden, Bobby Knight, Don Haskins, Eddie Sutton and Bill Self.

These days, Kruger smiles about those Hartman film sessions.

“Fundamentals, and details, were very important to him,” Kruger says. “As a player, I remember you hated seeing your mistakes on film, when everyone was looking at it.”

Film, he says, is very unforgiving.

“Because it’s right there,” Kruger says. “It’s not a matter of ‘I don’t think I did that.’ Yeah, you did. No opinion. It’s right there in black and white.”

Like Iba and Hartman, Kruger stresses basics — proper use of the pivot foot, blocking out on rebounds, no silly passes — from the first practice of the season.

“It’s not something you do game night,” Kruger says. “It’s something you do every day.”

Lawrence, a sophomore from Bishop Gorman High, excelled during the first third of this season, giving out 28 assists and turning it over only three times.

Eight turnovers over a four-game stretch, which included Minnesota, brought him back down to earth.

His current ratio is about 3.5 assists per turnover. Because he doesn’t average three assists a game, he does not qualify for the national rankings, which Michigan State guard Drew Neitzel tops at 4.61.

Lawrence, Adams (35th in the country at 2.28) and Terry (69th, 2.0) have helped UNLV rate 15th among the 328 Division I programs, and best in the Mountain West, at 1.33 assists to turnovers.

“Every possession feels like the last possession,” Lawrence says. “Play like that, you’ll always win.”