Former Florida coach Lon Kruger now thrives at Illinois, where his NCAA Tournament-bound team enjoys booming fan interest.
By JOEY JOHNSTON
Tribune Staff Writer
(c) Tampa Bay Times. Originally published March 11, 1997.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Lon Kruger hustled across the University of Illinois campus earlier this winter, walking double-time to keep an appointment. The wind was a cruel whip, making sub-freezing temperature seem sub-tolerable.
“Not so bad, wait until it really gets cold,” said Kruger, teasing a bundled-up visitor from Florida. “We’re not in the Sunshine State. The weather here, it’s different.”
As different, some argue, as the basketball climate between Champaign and Gainesville.
For the hoops purist, Champaign is sweet. It goes down smooth. While the snow falls, life at Assembly Hall remains warm and inviting.
Kruger, the first-year Illini coach, doesn’t campaign for attention. His season wasn’t overshadowed by football recruiting. Coaches coach, players play and fans arrive, even by icy roads from Chicago, Springfield, Peoria and St. Louis.
A sincerity of interest, Kruger calls it.
Similar to what he witnessed during the University of Florida’s magical run to the 1994 Final Four. But, still basking in that memory, Kruger’s struggling Gators last season drew an average of 7,896 fans to the 12,000-seat O’Connell Center.
The breakthrough was gone. Even for big Southeastern Conference games, there were rows of empty seats. Five minutes before tip-off, you could buy a good seat. Some nights, quiet filled the place. It was more Chapel than Hill.
Perhaps that explains why Kruger, with six years remaining on his UF contract, bolted for Illinois last March. He moved to a program steeped in tradition, and closer to family in Kansas. He left without apology, treasuring good times and predicting that UF will rise again.
But during an average season — let alone a bad one — Gainesville can be a lonely outpost, particularly for a man whose Midwestern roots tell him blind loyalty helps a team.
“I have been asked if my decision — from Florida to Illinois — was a lateral move,” Kruger said. “Both are major schools in major conferences. But in terms of basketball significance, in terms of people’s interest in our program, it was not a lateral move. Not at all.”
Kruger’s No. 24-ranked Illini (21-9) have beaten UCLA, Minnesota, Michigan and Iowa. They added their first win at Indiana since 1990. Friday, No. 6-seeded Illinois will meet No. 11 Southern California (17-10) in an NCAA Southeast Region first-rounder at Charlotte, N.C.
The Illini players, initially bitter because longtime assistant Jimmy Collins was passed over for Kruger, have accepted their new coach. “He’s our father figure,” Illini guard Kiwane Garris said.
Kruger is competing with the same team that finished ninth in the Big Ten under Coach Lou Henson, who retired after 21 seasons. He’s even without forward Jerry Hester, the second-leading scorer, who had season-ending back surgery in December. As any coach will attest, victories can boost popularity.
“The adjustment was quick and relatively easy to make,” Kruger said. “It just feels like home here.”
How ironic. Gainesville was once his home, his refuge. It seemed perfect, particularly when UF Athletic Director Jeremy Foley rewarded him with a rollover contract extension through 2001.
“The University of Florida had done everything possible to indicate its commitment,” Foley said. “You’d like to think all our coaches would stay forever, but it doesn’t work that way, I guess. Still, when I heard what might be happening with Lon, I was surprised.”
Kruger Takes Flight
These were a frantic 48 hours: Rumors and reports, an up-front briefing with Foley, a flight to Champaign, a late-night farewell to UF players, the news conference in Illinois. All remarkably decisive.
“We never really intended to start over again,” said Kruger’s wife, Barbara, her eyes watering at the memory of leaving Gainesville. “We’ll always have some Gator in us. There’s excitement with a new challenge. It’s not that you don’t want to go, just that you don’t want to leave where you are.
“We had to make a decision, then stick with it. Dragging it out is not good for anyone. It was a scramble to contact all our friends before the news broke. But it was the best way. It had to happen quickly.”
Kruger’s quick decision was two years in the making. Illinois Athletic Director Ron Guenther sat six rows behind the UF bench in ’94 when Kruger’s Gators met Duke in Charlotte’s national semifinals.
Guenther took mental notes: sharp demeanor, clean program, well-respected, Midwestern roots. When Henson retired last March, media speculators trotted out Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Utah’s Rick Majerus. Guenther quietly procured the coach he wanted.
“In our opinion, for the Illinois program, Lon was the most attractive candidate in the United States,” Guenther said. “Basketball is the attraction here. I got the sense from Lon that he wanted to go to a place where basketball was important.”
Kruger, who was earning $500,000 a season at UF, received a five-year contract worth nearly $3.2 million.
Left behind in Gainesville? A program “bankrupt of talent” according to Kentucky’s Rick Pitino and a rebuilding project for Billy Donovan, the new coach, whose Gators finished 13-17. Plus, a lingering suggestion that UF’s Final Four appearance was a fluke, that Gainesville was strictly about football.
Don’t tell Foley that.
“Every reason our football program is successful — great fans, facilities, recruiting base, academics, administrative commitment, coaching — all those things are in place for basketball,” Foley said.
“Now our basketball team has to duplicate achievement over a period of time, just like football. Norm Sloan had three years in the NCAA Tournament and Lon had two. That’s five times in the history of our program. That is not duplicating achievement over a period of time.
“We need consistency. Not two years good, two years down. At the University of Florida, the question shouldn’t be, ‘Will we get an NCAA bid?’ It should be, ‘What seed are we getting and where are they sending us for the first round?’ We must build to that point.”
Building the Gators is a subject Kruger knows well. When hired by then-Athletic Director Bill Arnsparger in 1990, UF basketball was scandal-ridden and downtrodden.
The Gators were retooled in Kruger’s image, feisty and smart. He was labeled great coach, average recruiter. There were no McDonald’s All-Americans on UF’s roster. But in ’94, that didn’t matter.
What a scene. Old-time Bull Gators wept at courtside as Kruger and his players cut down nets after beating Boston College in the East Region final. A basketball epiphany in a football state.
Even after surrendering a 13-point second-half lead and losing to Duke at the Final Four, Gator basketball had a feel-good future. Four starters were returning. Daytona Beach’s Vince Carter, the eventual Mr. Basketball, was said to be infatuated with UF. ESPN visited Gainesville for Midnight Madness. Life was good.
“When we were recruiting that high-profile player and somebody said, ‘Why do you want to go to Florida? They’ll never go to the Final Four,’ we had the comeback,” Foley said. “We had just been to the Final Four.”
Still, to use Foley’s words, Kruger’s Gators couldn’t duplicate achievement over time. They labored through the 1994-95 season, barely reaching the NCAA Tournament before losing a first-rounder to Iowa State. UF’s recruiting priorities fled — Carter to North Carolina and Louis Bullock to Michigan.
“If they come to Florida, maybe that brings a different attitude about the program,” Kruger said. “Getting those players would’ve created great interest. But it’s hard to predict when you’re talking about things that didn’t happen.”
The Gators stumbled to 12-16 last season. Kruger often bit his tongue while playing before unfilled arenas. Privately, he wrestled with the sliding support.
Fighting For Support?
Kruger said basketball commitment from UF’s administration improved during his six seasons. But Illinois, he said, offered more.
“Here at Illinois, it’s assumed you’re going to an exempt contest [a tournament in Hawaii, Alaska or Puerto Rico, for example] every season,” Kruger said. “At Florida, it’s not going to happen every year. That bothered me. Was it the budget? It shouldn’t be. I mean, the budget at the University of Florida?
“Maybe it’s just a slight indicator of the pecking order. Maybe I ruffled some feathers at times, but they needed to be ruffled. When you’re a basketball coach, you fight for basketball.
“Basketball interest has improved at Florida. But the basketball coach there has to constantly fight for the program. Maybe that’s what volleyball coaches have to do. Maybe outside of the Southeast, a football coach has to fight for his program. Here at Illinois, I don’t have to fight so much for this program. My main objective is coaching.”
Foley said the exempt-contest argument is not accurate. Donovan’s Gators played in Puerto Rico last December. They will play in Hawaii next season.
“It’s unfortunate if Lon feels he had to ‘fight’ for his program,” Foley said. “I try to be as personally committed as possible to get each of our coaches all the resources they need. When Lon left, he said Illinois was an opportunity he had to take for him and his family. If there were other reasons, he didn’t share them with me. He never said, ‘I’m leaving because there’s no commitment here,’ nor could he feel that.
“All the credit in the world goes to Lon Kruger for putting that Final Four team together. Yet, he did it with the resources available to him at the University of Florida. Billy Donovan obviously will have similar resources. From that point, as all great coaches will say, you have to go out and get great players. Beat those recruiting trails.”
Kruger landed in Illinois just as the state’s talent was being compared to the 1978-79 class (Isiah Thomas, Mark Aguirre, Terry Cummings). He already has landed a top-10 nationally rated group for next season, led by Peoria Manual’s Sergio McClain and Marcus Griffin.
That coup followed significant statewide tension when Kruger got the job over Collins, the Illinois assistant who recruited Chicago and was friendly with many of the city’s Public League coaches. Some said Illinois would never sign another player from the city.
Said Chicago Simeon coach Bob Hambric last winter, “I hope the program falls on its face. There was a famous quote a long time ago that said, ‘Remember the Alamo.’ We’ll modify that a little and say, ‘Remember DePaul.’ “
Such emotion was expected.
“It wasn’t negative toward me,” Kruger said. “They were sticking up for Jimmy Collins [now the head coach at Illinois-Chicago]. I understand that. Those feelings lasted about a month, then died out.”
Kruger hired fence-mender Rob Judson, the former Illinois player and Bradley assistant, who solidified the state’s recruiting efforts. And the current Illini players, the Henson/Collins recruits, became allies.
Including junior swingman Bryant Notree, the most vocal critic of Collins’ non-hiring.
“I just stood there at Coach Kruger’s press conference with his statements going in one ear and out the other,” Notree said. “I was pretty hysterical about the university not giving Coach Collins a chance. But I just told myself this was a business, like the NBA, where they change coaches all the time.”
By summer, Notree discovered something else. He not only accepted Kruger, he liked him.
“He calls me by my nickname, ‘B Note,’ not Bryant,” Notree said. “Coaches sometimes tell you what you want to hear. Coach Kruger listens to us and trusts in us. He made believers of us. He took Florida to the Final Four. We want that, too.”
Kruger just smiles when reminded of ’94, the Final Four run, the groundswell of support. Nothing will ever temper that happy memory.
Now he’s headed back to Charlotte, the site of his defining moment at UF. He’s still coaching the orange and blue — but at Illinois, not Florida.
“I still look at the Florida box scores, still pull for the kids,” Kruger said. “And I wish the best always for that program. I’ll always be grateful to the core group of fans — the 6,000 or so — who were always there. They deserve the best.
“Change can be good for both parties. Jeremy has hired a coach, his own guy, and Billy will do great. I have a new challenge and that’s healthy. So if both sides come out with positives, it’s all the better.”
