UNLV Basketball Head Coach Kevin Kruger poses in Mendenhall Center on UNLV campus Tuesday, June 15, 2021.
Tuesday, July 13, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Kevin Kruger and his assistants hit the road this past weekend for the first live recruiting period of the summer, and according to the first-time head coach it was a productive endeavor.
Not only was it an all-important opportunity to see the Class of 2022 (and beyond) in action, it was also a chance to get back to something resembling pre-pandemic routine: Airports, rental cars, polo shirts, high school bleachers and thick coaches’ packets.
Kruger, a basketball lifer (as most coaches are), was glad to return to the recruiting trail.
“It was good to get back,” Kruger said. “It was a little bit like old times, going around and seeing the usual AAU teams. It kind of felt like things are getting back to normal.”
A huge part of Kruger’s job now is planning and overseeing UNLV’s recruiting efforts, from identifying potential recruits, targeting his preferred players and mapping out a recruiting strategy to land them.
This weekend saw UNLV’s four coaches crisscross through various recruiting events in Birmingham, Atlanta, Dallas and Las Vegas.
It’s a lengthy, involved process, and Kruger was in his element when it came to plotting out the details of this recruiting period.
“It’s fun and exciting to sit with the group of coaches and figure out how you’re going to get to what games, who you’re going to see, the matchups, when such-and-such player is going against another player or this program or that program, going to a different city or sometimes two or three different cities in a weekend and figuring out who you like. I think we as a staff definitely enjoy that part.”
Recruiting during the summer of 2020 boiled down to a limited number of events, none of which coaches were allowed to attend in person due to NCAA pandemic restrictions. That meant the only way to watch recruits was on tape or via live streaming, which had its benefits and its drawbacks.
Kruger is a believer in in-person evaluation, as he thinks he can get a better feel for a young player by watching him up close and picking up on the little things.
“I think it’s vital, I really do,” Kruger said. “It’s little things, even something as simple as the way a player checks into a game — do they pop off the bench and are they excited to check in? If a teammate dives on the floor, what’s their reaction? You can see a lot of big things on film and you can take a lot from it, but little things like that just kind of get your basketball instincts going in a certain direction. You can watch a guy and something they do and your instincts kick in and something doesn’t sit right. And there’s other guys that might not be overly heralded or get a lot of attention, but they do a lot of the little things that go into winning that you may not pick up on camera.”
NCAA rules prohibit Kruger from discussing specific recruits, but UNLV is known to be aggressively targeting a handful of recruits in the Class of 2022, with local standouts Joshua Jefferson, Milos Uzan and Pop Isaacs atop the list. All three were in action this weekend (Jefferson and Uzan in Birmingham and Isaacs in Las Vegas) and UNLV coaches made sure to be in attendance.
Though Kruger and his staff got a late start in this recruiting cycle, he thinks UNLV has done a good job of positioning itself to secure some difference-makers from the Class of 2022.
“I think we’re in a good spot,” Kruger said. “The hard part for the 2022 class is we haven’t played. Without any games under our belt as a coaching staff it’s kind of hard to get across to a recruit the style that we want to play or what it’s going to look like on the court. That’s where the relationships and the experience come in.”
Mike Grimala can be reached at 702-948-7844 or [email protected]. Follow Mike on Twitter at twitter.com/mikegrimala.
