Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

REBELS BASKETBALL:

Five Questions with UNLV coach Lon Kruger

As the regular season draws to a close, the Rebels’ seventh-year coach reflects on the regular season that was

UNLV vs. Central Michigan Pregame

Sam Morris / Las Vegas Sun

UNLV head coach Lon Kruger watches his team warm up before the Rebels game against Central Michigan University on Thursday, Dec. 30, 2010.

With the regular season coming to an end this weekend in Utah, UNLV has all but locked up its fourth NCAA tournament bid in the last five seasons.

It certainly wasn't the smoothest of roads to get to this point, but the Rebels persevered through some major struggles during the middle portion of the 2010-11 slate and avoided taking a step back as a program.

With postseason play just on the horizon, Sun UNLV beat writer Ryan Greene took a few minutes this week to sit down with coach Lon Kruger to discuss the up-and-down regular season that was.

Ryan Greene: You guys get off to the hot start in November and early December. Could you see down the road that there were going to be some bumps in the road? How much did you and the staff worry about how guys would deal with the downs?

Lon Kruger: The thing that we did early especially well was we played really hard … then made a ton of shots. The making of all the shots distorted things a little bit, because after seven, eight or nine games, we were shooting in the mid-50s (percentage-wise). It's a huge number, and it's easier to play harder when everything's going well. You don't expect to shoot it to the other extreme like we did. We shot it so poorly for a stretch of a few weeks. You never anticipate that, but you never expect to shoot it at the rate we were early.

RG: When things did go bad in terms of shooting the ball, it had to weigh on these guys. Did it feel like it snowballed a bit?

LK: This day and age, with technology and the social networks, your confidence can go pretty quickly. If you're reading what's being chatted about or said about you or whatever … you've got to be careful about it. You have to keep working. That's (the coaching staff's) function in the whole thing. We try to remind them to stay the course, keep working and know that we're going to make shots. You have to just keep promoting the confidence aspect of it. Still, it's hard for young people not to take it personal when they read about it and there's so much conversation about it.

RG: How much different is it now than it was not that long ago since the influx of social networks and everything? Then, you could tell kids to keep their heads down and not pick up the newspaper. Now, you can't get away from it, it seems.

LK: You can't get away from it. It's much different. We've talked over and over about it in our coaches meetings that we have to address that more in the offseason — The social networks and all the things that are out there. Our guys still take those few negative statements and it becomes personal. Not that it should, but to young people, it does. We have to address that even more thoroughly. Now we've got a reference point, because that really compounded our problem.

RG: It seems like you guys have picked up the pace on offense a little bit. What kind of spurred that of late, with guys doing a bit of a 180?

LK: A lot of it is associated with making shots. When you do, everything just flows better, your confidence flows. But I think their focus as they started getting into the latter portion of the conference schedule, with the urgency and things winding down, things take on more significance. (Tre'Von Willis) is getting healthier. When he started contributing like he was able at the end of the Air Force game, that was the initial resurgence of his play. Other than the not making shots, there wasn't much that changed. Their effort was pretty consistent throughout, and it's more difficult when you're making shots. It's frustrating, not as pretty, and again, when you flip that over and Tre wasn't healthy and Derrick (Jasper)'s knees are keeping him from doing what he was going to be able to do, the emergence of the big guys was huge. That's part of the key to the season. Had they not done that at the time, when we did start making shots, we wouldn't have been in the position to be able to salvage anything.

RG: Do you think they're taking a little more pride now in having secured an NCAA tournament bid because they got through those struggles?

LK: Absolutely. Especially the young guys coming back next year. Looking back on it, some people thought all hope was lost, everything was horrible, everything was terrible. And now they're going to the tournament again. That's almost lost. These guys, again, hung in there pretty good.

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