It’s All Relative to Krugers

There’s no mistaking the father-son resemblance -- the dark, piercing eyes, the wide forehead, the movement.

“We walk alike, we run alike,” says Kevin Kruger, Arizona State guard. “But I’ve got better hair.”

Kevin Kruger, a redshirt junior for the Sun Devils, is the son of Nevada Las Vegas Coach Lon Kruger.

Many fathers of college players arrange time off from their jobs to watch their sons play. They book cheap tickets months in advance, they sneak off from work early to catch a practice ... Those aren’t options in the Kruger family.

So after every game, Kevin makes sure a DVD copy of Arizona State’s effort is express-shipped to Las Vegas. And late at night or early in the morning, Lon opens the package and slides the recording into a machine, then settles in to savor every move, every dribble, every shot, every defensive stop made by his son.

There’s a lot to see. Kevin Kruger leads the Sun Devils in scoring, at 14.9 points, as well as assists, steals, minutes played and three-point shooting. He’s played all 40 minutes in each of Arizona State’s last four games. So Lon has to pause the recording if he wants to grab a soda.

“He watches me like a dad, not a coach,” Kevin says. “If I miss a shot he’ll say, ‘You’re right on it,’ instead of saying, ‘You’ve got to make that shot.’ And I’m glad about that.”

It has always been that way for Kevin and Lon. Not once has Lon, an accomplished athlete himself at Kansas State -- two-time Big Eight basketball player of the year and star baseball pitcher -- and then a college coach at Texas Pan American, Kansas State, Florida and Illinois, followed by a short, unhappy period as coach of the Atlanta Hawks before returning to college to rebuild UNLV, ever coached a team Kevin played on.

“It never worked out that way, and maybe that’s for the best,” Lon says. “I never wanted to pressure Kevin into doing things my way. I’ve always wanted him to find his own way.”

Finding his way to sports, though, wasn’t difficult.

“As a kid I spent a lot of time hanging around practices,” Kevin says. “It was just natural to be around games.”

Like his father, Kevin was a talented two-sport athlete. “Really,” Kevin says, “for the longest time I thought baseball was my sport. I’m a pretty good shortstop.”

That’s not bragging. Before talking about himself Kevin says his older sister, Angie, should be getting publicity.

“She’s doing her [medical] residency in Florida,” Kevin says. “In obstetrics. She’s a great basketball player too. But she chose something more important.”

And when Kevin arrived at Arizona State, he was uncomfortable talking about his dad. The focus of any press, Kevin said, belonged to the team and not to him.

“Just because my dad’s a coach? That’s not right,” Kevin says.

Kevin also doesn’t seem to have a burning desire to play for his father.

“He wouldn’t have wanted me when he was at Illinois,” Kevin says. “Heck, he’s probably got better guards than me now at UNLV.

“I think my dad has always shied away from coaching me because he didn’t want people to think he was butting in or a big shot or something. He didn’t want to step on other coaches’ toes. He doesn’t coach me at all now. He said absolutely nothing about my decisions on colleges. It was all my decision.”

Kevin wasn’t highly recruited out of high school.

“I guess there was the impression I was too slow,” he says.

Lon says his son “had a bad AAU experience and he never got on the national radar.”

In any case, Sun Devil Coach Rob Evans had become friends with Lon when they both were coaching in the Southeastern Conference, Evans at Mississippi, Kruger at Florida.

“I’ve known Kevin since he was a little kid,” Evans says. “Kevin understands the game, understands why we as coaches do things. I was enthralled at Kevin’s knowledge of the game and his ability to make people on the court better.

“Lon has been nothing but supportive. When we talk, he’ll only ask if Kevin is doing what we want him to do and then he talks about someone else.”

It has not been an easy season for Kevin and the Sun Devils. Heading into Thursday’s game against UCLA at Pauley Pavilion, Arizona State is 7-11 overall and 1-8 and last in the Pac-10. Evans is rumored to be on his final legs as coach.

Kevin Kruger knows what it’s like to watch a coach you love struggle. His father’s unsatisfactory time in the NBA has stuck with Kevin.

“You read bad things about your dad, it’s hard,” he said. “I know he was unhappy, but he wouldn’t say that. But I know he’s much happier now. I know things are hard for Coach Evans too. It’s tough.”

Busting Brackets

One of the charming innovations ESPN has brought to its exhaustive college basketball coverage is BracketBusters weekend.

The idea is to match up teams from mid-major conferences that don’t usually play each other on a single weekend. It gives these so-called “mid-majors” unexpected television exposure and opportunities to get home games against other like-minded opponents.

ESPN picked 26 teams from a pool of 100 in five mid-major conferences to pair up in 13 TV games Feb. 17 and 18.

The marquee game is Bucknell at Northern Iowa. Bucknell became briefly famous last season for upsetting Kansas in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and Northern Iowa is nationally ranked now, with impressive wins over Louisiana State and Iowa. The winner will solidify its hopes of earning an NCAA at-large bid, should it be upset in its conference tournament.

The 74 other teams also get paired up that weekend, and the Big West is part of the contract. UC Irvine, undefeated in the conference, has drawn a home game against Drake of the Missouri Valley Conference.

Anteater Coach Pat Douglass only wishes his team had been better in the nonconference season.

“We needed a little better record to get the TV game,” he said. “But it’s still good for us.”

Drake is coached by Tom Davis, previously coach at Stanford and Iowa, and Douglass looks forward to matching coaching wits with Davis.

“We play golf together,” Douglass said. “I won’t say who wins.”

As part of the contract, UC Irvine must play at Drake next year.

Other Big West BracketBuster matchups include Eastern Washington at Cal State Fullerton, Cal State Northridge at Boise State, Southeast Missouri State at UC Riverside and Long Beach State at Manhattan.

“Because of our slow start, we’ve flown under the radar screen,” Douglass said. “It’s always interesting to mix it up a little bit with these interregional games, and the weekend gives all the mid-majors a little more attention and some NCAA-type exposure.”

Teams aren’t allowed to scout each other and can exchange tapes of only three games.

And although some conferences, such as the Missouri Valley, which is ranked higher than the Pac-10 right now, hope to get as many as four NCAA teams this year, timing is everything for the Big West.

“If we got 25 wins this year, like we did a few years ago, and lost in the conference tournament, we’d have a chance for a bid now,” Douglass said. “The mid-majors are getting more notice like that. But we had a shaky start so for us, we’ll have to win the conference tournament.”

Halfway Done

It’s the midway point of the Pac-10 season, so Arizona Coach Lute Olson was asked to assess the conference.

“As things go now, probably USC being 5-4 through the first half is probably the biggest surprise because they were expected to be down quite a ways,” Olson said.

It’s hard for Olson to muster kind words for UCLA, but with the injuries the Bruins have suffered, it’s easy to make an argument that by leading UCLA to a 7-2 conference record, and a 17-4 overall record, and having his team sweep Pac-10 trips to Arizona and Oregon, Ben Howland should be mentioned as a national coach of the year candidate.

That said, Olson is also right to note that, “We feel pretty good about our position. We’re one game behind UCLA, and that comes about from their beating us on our home court. After this week’s road trip, we come back and play five of our last seven at home.

“We’ll be in a position, if we get the job done this week, to make things very interesting in the second half of the league season.”

This trip of which Olson speaks is to USC and UCLA. Sounds like a challenge.

No Respect

Rick Majerus was almost coaching in the Pac-10 this year, until he gave back the USC job he had for about two minutes last winter. In a Web chat on ESPN.com this week, Majerus certainly had nothing good to say about the Pac-10.

About the NCAA tournament: “If more than two from the Pac-10 go, it will be all politics, but then again, everything’s politics. The Pac-10 is really poor, but they’ve got a lot of tradition.

And: “UCLA could back into a four seed, but whatever the Pac-10 gets may have been rooted in the historical past, certainly not in the present of this year’s conference.”

Oh, and on Washington: “They play a little too fast and careless for my likes. I love Lorenzo [Romar], I’d want my son to play for him. But I think he’s trying to go Phoenix Suns, without [Steve] Nash. It’s difficult to play that way at the collegiate level and play consistently.”

Here’s guessing Majerus won’t be accepting any other Pac-10 jobs in the near future.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Mid-major madness

The 13 games to be televised Feb. 17-18 as part of ESPN’s annual BracketBusters event, along with games involving Big West schools, all among the 37 games on Feb. 18 that will not be televised:

Bucknell at Northern Iowa

* George Mason at Wichita State

* Missouri State at Wisconsin Milwaukee

* Louisiana Tech at Southern Illinois

* Buffalo at Iona

* Fresno State at Creighton

* Akron at Nevada

* Butler at Kent State

* Marist at Old Dominion

* Northwestern State at Utah State

* Samford at Ohio

* Albany at Virginia Commonwealth

* Northern Arizona at Western Kentucky

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GAMES INVOLVING BIG WEST

* Cal Poly San Luis Obispo at St. Mary’s

* Cal State Northridge at Boise State

* Long Beach State at Manhattan

* UC Santa Barbara at San Jose State

* Eastern Washington at Cal State Fullerton

* Drake at UC Irvine

* Southeast Missouri State at UC Riverside

* New Mexico State at Pacific

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MID-MAJOR TOP 25

This week’s rankings of schools from 21 mid-major conferences, as voted upon by a panel of 31 coaches for collegeinsider.com:

1. Gonzaga (17-3); 2. Bucknell (16-3); 3. Northern Iowa (19-4); 4. Southern Illinois (16-5); 5. Wichita State (17-5); 6. Creighton (14-5); 7. Wisconsin Milwaukee (16-4); 8. George Mason (15-5); 9. Montana (16-3); 10. Western Kentucky (16-5); 11. North Carolina Wilmington (16-6); 12. Old Dominion (15-6); 13. Winthrop (14-5); 14. Ohio (11-5); 15. Iona (15-43); 16. Akron (14-4); 17. Kent State (14-6); 18. Hofstra (14-4); 19. Northwestern State (13-6); 20. UC Irvine (12-8); 21. Pacific (14-6); 22. Buffalo (14-5); 23. Virginia Commonwealth (14-5); 24. South Alabama (14-5); 25. Northern Arizona (15-6).