Kruger enjoys role as race commander

Sam Morris

UNLV basketball coach Lon Kruger talks with wife Barb, left, and Cheri Quijano before the start of the Nationwide Series Sam’s Town 300 on Saturday.

By Ron Kantowski (contact)

Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009 | 7 p.m.

Sam Morris

As grand marshal, UNLV basketball coach Lon Kruger makes the call "Gentlemen, start you engines" before the start of the Nationwide Series Sam's Town 300 on Saturday.

"Gentlemen ... start ... your ... EN-GINES!"

And they did.

Too bad the UNLV basketball team doesn't listen like the starting field of the NASCAR Nationwide Series, Lon Kruger must have been thinking.

As grand marshal of the Sam's Town 300, it was the UNLV basketball coach's responsibility to repeat the most famous words in auto racing on Saturday afternoon. For a rookie, he did pretty good. No double dribbles on national TV.

"If I have to say any more, I might need cue cards," said Kruger, who was wearing a Sam's Town 300 cap that (almost) enabled him to blend in with the big crowd estimated at 80,000.

The Rebel basketball coach is to auto racing what Scott Gaylord is to the Nationwide Series. He's still learning.

"As far as knowing anything about it -- no," Kruger said after getting his first look at the massive speedway grandstands that tower even larger than Utah's 7-foot-2 center Luke Nevill.

"As far as appreciating what they do and how tough it is ... they were telling me that 15 people travel with each car. You can't even imagine things like that. I wouldn't even stop to think about it."

Kruger's day at the races began with a tour of Carl Edwards' hauler that transports his race cars to and from the track. Later, Kruger and his wife, Barb, received a tour of pit road where the UNLV coach asked about the stacks of tires that, like Dale Earnhardt Jr. T-shirts and baseball caps, were everywhere.

As the Sprint Cup drivers screamed 'round and 'round on practice laps, the tour guide explained the difference between scuffed and "sticker" tires. Kruger nodded his head, as if they were talking about breaking a 2-1-2 zone press.

He stopped in the Roush-Fenway pit box where they were having trouble syncing a trackside TV monitor with a satellite feed -- just like UNLV basketball fans and The Mtn.

"I wanted to catch some scores," Kruger joked.

Told that each car in the Sprint Cup series costs about $25 million a season to run -- Cliff Findlay money -- Kruger seemed amazed.

"He might only be able to afford to run one then," he said of his No. 1 booster, who would rather sell cars instead of race them.

When Kruger was introduced to the crowd, there was polite applause. Most NASCAR fans at the speedway come from out of town, so the ones who weren't cheering must have been Duke or North Carolina fans. I suppose they also could have been BYU fans, but I sort of doubt it.

Part of Kruger's job as grand marshal was shaking hands with the drivers as they were introduced. He didn't appear to recognize their names and with one exception, they didn't seem to recognize his.

Brendan Gaughan was the one exception. Gaughan, a native Las Vegan who sat on John Thompson's bench at Georgetown and even got to play a few minutes whenever the Hoyas played St. Leo, seemed pleased to meet Kruger. Maybe they were talking about breaking a 2-1-2 press, too. Or maybe Kruger was asking if the South Point racing team crew had a tool that would fix Wink Adams' jump shot.

Kruger said he was such a non-car guy that he couldn't even remember the make or model of his first one.

"Dad was a mail carrier but he tinkered in selling used cars," Kruger said of his father, Don. "We were one of those families that didn't have a car for very long. We'd only have it until he sold it.

"But I remember taking a (Chevy) Malibu off to college."

Kruger said he was sure that some of the guys he went to high school with in Silver Lake, Kan., were John Milner-types who had hot rods and were probably into "American Graffiti" and that sort of thing. But he was only into football, basketball and baseball and grew up in the country, where most things with an engine are called tractors.

So what does he do when he hears strange noises under the hood of his car?

"Call for help," he said. "It would be a big mistake if I tried to do something myself."

Kruger left the track after the first half-dozen wrecks or so, but was on hand long enough to acquire an appreciation for what NASCAR drivers do.

"The thing that amazes me is how fast they are going and how close they are to each other," he said.

The thing that amazed me, on the other hand, is how often they kept running into each other.