Assistant Molinari coaching alongside mentor in Kruger
NORMAN — Lon Kruger has always told Jim Molinari the truth.
The t wo met and pl ayed t o g e t h e r a t K a n s a s S t a t e during the 1973- 74 season, when Kruger was a senior and Molinari a freshman.
Kruger, now the Oklahoma men's basketball head coach, earned his second-straight Big Eight Player of the Year honor that season.
Kruger took Molinari under his wing and helped him adjust to college life on and off the court.
They formed a lasting friendship, with Mo lin ari making Kruger his mentor. Over the years, Molinari has gone to Kruger for advice on all kinds of things.
“I always, if I had a question, not just about basketball but about life, anything, I would call him,” Molinari said.
“And he would always give me great advice. Maybe not always what I wanted to hear, but that's the definition of a friend.”
Molinari often looked to Kruger for advice about his coaching career.
A year before Molinari was let go from his head coaching job at Bradley, Kruger suggested he take a job at another school that was interested in him. Molinari ended up staying at Bradley, but he appreciated Kruger's honesty.
Molinari even looked to Kruger for dating advice. While at DePaul, his first assistant coaching job, Molinari would often ask Kruger for his opinion on Molinari's girlfriends.
“The reality is a real friend not only tells you the truth, but they have no motives in it other than your best interest,” Molinari said.
On Wednesday, Molinari and Kruger will return to the place where they met, as the Sooners play the Wildcats in their second meeting of the season. Decades later, the two are now part of the same coaching staff, and Kruger is still telling Molinari the truth.
Molinari was hired as an assistant coach at Oklahoma in May 2019 after spending five years as an assistant at Nebraska. Like Kruger, Molinari had a number of stops along the way to the Sooners, including almost two decades as a head coach at Bradley (1991-2002) and Illinois Wesleyan (2008-2014) among other schools.
Working alongside Kruger now, Molinari knows Kruger is the same way as a coach as he is a friend, and that is a message he relays to the players.
“I tell the players, `When he tells you something it's about your best interest, not his best interest,'” Molinari said. “And when they start to understand that more, because most of the people in their lives are not like that, they feel more comfortable and they play better.”
As one of three assistants on Kruger's staff, Molinari knows their personal relationship is different from their professional one. Their longstanding relationship made Molinari's joining the staff easy because Molinari and Kruger already knew how the other thought, their motivations and their integrity.
It has been exciting to work with Kruger, Molinari said, and he is still taking advice from his mentor.
“I know what the expectation is,” Molinari said. “I know what's important to him, and he's let me know when he thinks I need to do something better.”
OU at Kansas State
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday
Where: Bramlage Coliseum; Manhattan, Kan.
TV: ESPN+
Radio: KRXO-FM 107.7
Three things to know
• Oklahoma beat Kansas State in the first meeting between the two teams this season. The Sooners won 66-61 thanks to a 21-point performance from Austin Reaves. The redshirt junior guard scored 18 points in the final 11 minutes of the game.
• The Sooners are looking for their first win at the Bramlage Coliseum since the 2011-12 season. That was also the last season Oklahoma swept Kansas State.
• Senior forward Xavier Sneed led the Wildcats with a gamehigh 22 points in Norman earlier this season. Sneed has been one of Kansas State's top players, leading the team in scoring.