Father and son
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The Krugers won't be the first father-son combination to reach the Sweet 16, just the most unlikely.
UNLV coach Lon Kruger and point guard Kevin Kruger are the latest duo on a fairly long father-son list as they head into their Midwest regional semifinal game Friday against Oregon.
Saul Smith played a minute or two in the championship game won by Tubby Smith's Kentucky Wildcats in 1998, then endured enormous pressure as his father's starting point guard a couple of years later.
Pat Knight was a freshman reserve on Bobby Knight's last Final Four team at Indiana in 1992. Valparaiso's Bryce Drew hit one of the NCAA tournament's most famous shots in a first-round upset of Ole Miss, helping his dad Homer's club advance to the Sweet 16 in 1998. Patrick Beilein was the sixth man on the John Beilein-coached West Virginia team that reached the Elite Eight in 2005. Sean and Eddie Sutton reached the tournament's second weekend twice with Sean playing the point at Oklahoma State in the early 1990s.
The situation isn't even new to UNLV. Jerry Tarkanian's Runnin' Rebels spent a couple of weeks at No. 1 with Danny Tarkanian at point guard as a junior in 1983 and reached a Sweet 16 during Danny's senior season.
Oregon would have a father-son combination, too, if coach Ernie Kent's son, Jordan, had not elected to concentrate instead on football.
Yet, the Krugers are mining new territory. One year ago, their season together was an impossibility. Next season, it would have been, too.
Last March, Kevin Kruger was entering his fifth season at Arizona State. He would earn his bachelor's degree in justice studies in late June. His coach, Rod Barnes, had just been fired, and his new coach, Herb Sendek, was certain to go through a rebuilding process.
Then, on April 27, a new rule, Proposal 2005-54 – which was rescinded in January – opened the door for any player who had graduated but still had athletic eligibility to transfer to another school without sitting out a season. Kevin Kruger has been around basketball his entire life and is familiar with all kinds of rules, but this one sounded bizarre.
His first reaction: Why would they do that?
His second reaction: Hey, I've graduated. And I'll bet that my dad could use a point guard at UNLV.
"It was crazy to interpret the rule and then realize that it applies to me," Kevin Kruger said. "That's when it seemed like things were starting to go my way a little bit and lining up for me."
Never before had Kevin had the opportunity to play for his father. As a 10-year-old, he hung out with his father's Florida Gators when they reached the 1994 Final Four. But while Kevin was playing at Walton High in Marietta, Ga., he suffered through his dad's days as coach of the NBA's lowly Atlanta Hawks.
Lon Kruger also realized the new rule applied to his son, but he wasn't about to tamper with the Arizona State program by talking to Kevin about it. It took a call from Kevin to get things rolling.
"As I told him when he called to bring it up, 'No. 1, you've got to really, really want to do this. And, No. 2, you have to make sure you work it out with coach Sendek,' " Lon Kruger said. "And Kevin did. Coach Sendek made it very easy all the way through. He could have made him feel bad or feel guilty, and he never did that once."
Fitting in at UNLV never was a problem, Lon said, because Kevin had played and gotten along with the Rebels when he came home during breaks from ASU. And UNLV was about to lose its starting point guard to academic problems. There were no apparent chemistry problems.
"The players have made this quite the opposite – a very easy transition – and not a single snag at any point," Lon said. "The timing, in our players' eyes, was very good."
Jerry Tarkanian once said that having your son play for you works only if you're winning. Going 30-6 has made the situation easy on both Krugers.
"It's pretty difficult for any divisions to be created," Kevin said. "There isn't much bad that anyone can really say about (his father), so I don't have to listen to that. There isn't anything to get really, seriously aggravated with."
Even when Kevin went 0-for-8 in the Rebels' first-round game against Georgia Tech and missed six of his first seven against Wisconsin in the second round, he remained confident and relaxed. He hit three straight three-pointers to lead the Rebels to the 74-68 victory, while his dad beamed on the sidelines.
It's the best one-and-done story of this tournament.
