LAS VEGAS — The tag line was sinfully snarky, a shotgun wedding between slogan and city so felicitous it should have been officiated by an Elvis impersonator. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. The campaign seduced millions of visitors with a promise to keep their secrets, but alas, it could not consummate the marriage. The secrets stayed, but the people left.
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The city of Las Vegas has about 630,000 permanent residents, 2.3 million if you include the suburbs, but it still attracts way more transients than transplants. One of the few mainstays over the years has been the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, but in recent times the university, and especially its athletic department, has been one big revolving door. Over the last 15 years, UNLV has had seven presidents, six athletic directors, four football coaches and six men’s basketball coaches. That last category is especially disheartening given that Jerry Tarkanian once lorded over this town for 19 glorious (and sinful) years. UNLV went through yet another transition in March, when T.J. Otzelberger, who had only been on the job for two years, was hired away by Iowa State. Athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois promoted his top assistant, Kevin Kruger, to replace him. Five months later, she left for Missouri.
Will Kruger finally heal UNLV basketball’s case of chronic instability? On the one hand, he’s only 38 and has never been a head coach. On the other hand, he is smart, steady and extremely likable. He also has a first-rate pedigree as the son of Lon Kruger, a highly accomplished coach who won big at every college he has worked for — including UNLV, where he coached from 2004-11. Best of all, Kevin has local roots, having played here for one season after … wait for it … transferring from Arizona State.
Much like his dad, a soft-spoken Kansan, Kevin has a low-wattage demeanor distinctly at odds with the zeitgeist on The Strip. Yet, he’s secure in both his knowledge of the game and his ability to teach it, and he says he’s ready to meet the moment. “Sexy, quiet confidence,” is how his wife, Alli, describes his personality. “He’s a man of few words, but when he talks, the room goes quiet because you want to hear what he has to say.”
Kruger was an unconventional choice to replace Otzelberger, and an economic one as well. Reed-Francois gave him a five-year contract that will pay him $770,000 this season. That’s $400,000 less than the school was due to pay Otzelberger and makes Kruger the fifth highest-paid coach in the Mountain West Conference. Iowa State also had to pay UNLV $3.4 million to buy out Otzelberger’s contract. That’s not chump change for a department that has been financially strapped for quite some time. Kruger’s modest salary will theoretically make it easy for potential suitors to poach him should he get things rolling, but he doesn’t sound like a man who has one foot out the revolving door. “For a number of years, UNLV has been seen as a stepping stone,” he says. “I think we can make this a place where people want to be again.”
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Kruger has only lived in Las Vegas for three years — one as a player, the last two as an assistant — but he has a real fondness for the place. Five years ago, he reconnected with his future wife here, although they were both living somewhere else and just passing through. Now they are married with a nearly 2-year-old daughter, Cammy, and another girl due next month. His father, who retired last spring, still owns a house in the area. Kruger’s team probably won’t be real competitive this season, but he hopes it can lay a strong foundation. “I really think this is going to be a group that’s easy to root for,” he says. “This town knows basketball. They’re going to see guys diving on the floor and playing really hard. We really feel like if we can get that going, the wins will come.”
Ah, but will they stay?
The children of coaches tend to move around a lot. When Kevin was born in 1983, Lon was working his first head coaching job at Texas-Pan American. By the time Kevin graduated high school, Lon had coached at Kansas State, Florida, Illinois and the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. The move to Illinois was the toughest for Kevin. He was 12 and loved living in Gainesville, where he had a great group of friends and played all kinds of sports. Plus, the family left during the summer, when it was difficult for Kevin and his older sister, Angie, to make new friends. “I was a moody teenager,” Kevin says. “I’m sure I did everything I could to make my parents know that I didn’t want to be there.”
Kevin inherited his dad’s reserved nature, and all that moving around further embedded that quality. “If it shaped me in any way, it’s that I can blend a little bit,” he says. “At that age, you’re very worried about what people think of you, and you want to be accepted. I learned pretty early that it’s a lot easier to be accepted if you’re quiet. You stay back and wait your turn, see where you fit in, and go from there.”
The moves drew Kevin closer to his family, because there was no one else to hang out with until he got acclimated. It also drew him closer to basketball, because there was nothing to do but go to the gym and shoot. Lon was never the type to put pressure on his son, but he would remind Kevin of all the things his own players were doing to get better. Kevin learned to be a gym rat and a workout junkie. His main problem, believe it or not, was a bad temper. A cheap foul, a bad call or, heaven forbid, a dumb mistake could set him off in an instant. “It was probably my biggest pro and my biggest con,” he says. “It allowed me to be competitive enough to play when I wasn’t athletically gifted. But at the same time, there’s that fine line where you don’t want to be a distraction to your teammates.”
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When Kevin was a senior in high school in Atlanta, Lon reached out to Rob Evans, a close friend who was the head coach at Arizona State. Evans didn’t have any scholarships available so Kevin had to redshirt his first season in Tempe. That was just as well since he needed to develop his body. Once again, Kevin took his time blending in, but it didn’t take long for Evans to see the fire within. “There were many times I had to take him out of a practice or a game for a few minutes to get him to cool down,” Evans says. “If you didn’t know him real well you’d think he’s introverted, but don’t mistake his quietness for meekness.”
Kruger was such a good shooter that Evans wouldn’t let everyone leave practice each day until he made a half-court shot. By the time he was a redshirt junior, Kruger averaged 15 points and 3.5 assists while shooting 40.3 percent from 3. He also led the Pac-10 in minutes (39.0). “I don’t think any of us knew he would be as good a player as he turned out to be,” Evans says. “Shooting was his specialty, but he could also run a team. He could attack the basket and finish plays. He was just an all-around good player.”
The Sun Devils finished the 2005-06 season in ninth place in the Pac-10, and Evans was let go. That was the same year the NCAA implemented a then-controversial new rule allowing players who had earned their undergraduate degree to transfer without having to sit out. Lon had just finished up his second year at UNLV, so Kevin decided to play there for his senior season. (For the next few years, this provision was often called the Kevin Kruger Rule.) Lon wondered if Kevin would feel awkward playing for his pops, but that never materialized. “His first day on campus, he came by and said, let’s go to lunch,” Lon says. “He wasn’t avoiding me for appearances’ sake. He’s very genuine and very transparent.”
Kruger had an outstanding season, leading the Runnin’ Rebels in assists (5.1 per game) while ranking third in scoring (13.5). He helped No. 7 seed UNLV reach the Sweet 16, still the only time since Tarkanian that the Runnin’ Rebels made it past the first weekend. After going undrafted by the NBA, Kruger embarked on a six-year pro career that took him around the world. He played professionally in Bulgaria, Italy, Mexico, Belgium and Germany, with a couple of stops in NBA training camps and the NBA D League along the way. By the time Kevin was 28, he knew it was time to pivot into coaching. After spending a year as a grad assistant under Lon at Oklahoma, Kevin left to work at Northern Arizona for two seasons. Then he returned to Norman in 2016 to join his father’s staff as a full-time assistant.
As a player, Kruger led the Runnin’ Rebels to their last Sweet 16, in 2007. (Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images)Before the season started, the Sooners came to Las Vegas to play Oregon in a scrimmage. Kevin saw a post from Alli on Instagram indicating she was in town with some friends. Alli is four years younger than Kevin and grew up in Champaign. She knew him mostly because he was friends with her older sister. Kevin sent her a DM and suggested they meet up. Two weeks later, she visited him in Norman, and 19 months later they were married.
Working for his father at Oklahoma was another great learning experience. “There were times I’d get frustrated at a player and tell him, ‘Hit him with the hammer, let’s go,’” Kevin says. “But he was always calm and cool. He would rather let the players explain what they were seeing.” Three years later, Kevin got a call from Otzelberger, who had just been hired at UNLV. Otzelberger was looking for someone young, smart and ethical to join his staff. Kruger enjoyed working for his father, but he and Lon both understood the value of developing under a different coach.
Otzelberger’s personality is much more electric than Kruger’s. He encouraged his new assistant to make himself heard. “You’re a great guy with a great heart,” Otzelberger told him. “Don’t be afraid to come out of the box and be more vocal.” The inner hothead came out early that first season while Kruger was trying to teach the team a defensive rotation in preparation for an opponent he had scouted. When one of the players repeatedly blew his assignment, Kruger erupted. “The guys were kind of smiling and looking at each other like, OK, Kev, we see you’ve got that in you,” Otzelberger says. “And they responded. It was a good unifying moment.”
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Otzelberger was only 41 when he was hired, so there was every reason to expect he would stick around, especially after the team finished seventh in the Mountain West last season. Otzelberger, however, previously spent eight years as an assistant at Iowa State and is still close with the school’s athletic director, Jamie Pollard. When Iowa State jettisoned Steve Prohm on March 15, Pollard tapped Otzelberger to be his replacement. Kruger reached out to Reed-Francois and asked to be a candidate, but he had no idea what his chances were. During interviews over the next few days, he won over Reed-Francois and university president Keith Whitfield with his keen intellect and steady demeanor. It also didn’t hurt that he was the son of a man who had so much success at UNLV and was on the verge of retirement, which would allow him to spend plenty of time in the area.
While all of this was going on, one of Alli’s friends was visiting with her husband. On March 21, Kevin was about to drive them to the airport when his cell phone rang. It was Reed-Francois and Whitfield, calling to tell him he got the job. He didn’t say a word to Alli or her friends. He took them to the airport and then ran a quick errand at Target. Then he drove home, walked through the door and calmly said, “I got it.” Alli was surprised he was hired, and even more amazed he kept the news to himself for so long. “I’m like, how did you just drive my friends to the airport without screaming at the top of your lungs?” she says. “But that’s just him. Humble by nature.”
For a guy who has moved so much and lived around the world, the 18 inches that separate the assistant’s chair and head coach’s chair on the UNLV bench may be the biggest leap of all. During a recent team workout at the Mendenhall Center, Kruger stood next to a large flat screen and went over some missed defensive assignments from a previous practice. “Is that you again, Keshon?” he called out to 6-foot-4 freshman guard Keshon Gilbert, the only teenager on the team. It sounded like good-natured teasing, but Kruger wasn’t kidding. Midway through the workout, Kruger stopped the action and chastised the players for their low energy. “You don’t have it today, guys,” he said evenly. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Kruger has usually known what to tell his players. Now he just needs to crank up the volume. “This is his time to step up and get out of his comfort zone,” Otzelberger says. Lon has seen Kevin adapt many times over the years, and he has no doubt he will do so again. “I think he’ll make the transition very comfortably,” Lon says. “He’s always done that. When he went from middle school to high school, we thought, oh, I’m not sure he’s quite ready for this. Then he went to Arizona State and we thought, oh, I’m not sure he’s ready for this. He’s always more ready than you think he is. Maybe the parents are just the last to know.”
Those experiences left Kruger well-prepared to preside over a culture of impermanence. His team this season will have nine transfers, including two players who came from Texas, 6-9 senior forward Royce Hamm and 6-6 junior forward Donovan Williams, as well as Jordan McCabe, a 6-foot senior who averaged 2.2 points and 11 minutes last season at West Virginia. Several others came from lower mid-majors in hopes of proving themselves on a bigger stage. Michael Nuga, a 6-2 senior guard from Kent State, has especially shined during off-season workouts, contributing energy and tenacity as well as a skill set that produced 17.8 points per game last season. “Having been a transfer myself, I can understand what they’re going through and what they’re thinking,” Kruger says. “I want to be respected by the players as somebody who listens to them and tries to reason with them.”
One of the few returning players is last year’s leading scorer, 6-4 guard Bryce Hamilton, who put his name in the NBA Draft as well as the transfer portal but decided in May to come back for his senior season. Hamilton, a fellow introvert, spent a lot of time the last two years hanging with Kruger in his office, watching video and shooting the breeze. Hamilton had his share of high-major suitors asking him to leave, but Kruger’s hiring made him want to stay. “I knew that he could do well as a head coach,” Hamilton says. “He has good knowledge of the game. He knows what players he needs to yell at, and which ones like to talk on the side. And he’s definitely been more talkative the last few months.”
Turns out the man of few words has plenty to say. If he can find his voice, this could be one Vegas marriage that lasts.
(Top photo: Courtesy UNLV Athletics)
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