Kruger led the Gators to their first Final Four appearance in 1994
Former Florida men’s basketball coach Lon Kruger was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2022 on Sunday. He was one of nine members of the class to be inducted this evening in Kansas City as part of National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame Weekend.
Dan Cross and Craig Brown, two members of UF’s 1994 Final Four team, represented the Gators at the event, along with current Florida associate head coach Carlin Hartman, who coached with Kruger at Oklahoma for five seasons, and UF letterman and longtime broadcaster Bill Koss.
Kruger coached UF from 1990-96 and led the Gators to a 104-80 record, highlighted by the team’s 1994 Final Four run. He twice earned Southeastern Conference Coach of the Year honors at Florida (1992, ’94) and oversaw two All-Americans in Stacey Poole (1993 AP honorable mention) and Cross (1994, ’95 AP honorable mention). Cross, Poole, Brown, Dwayne Davis, Andrew DeClercq, and Dametri Hill each earned All-SEC honors under Kruger’s guidance.
Kruger totaled 674 wins over the course of his head coaching career with stops at Kansas State, Illinois, UNLV, Oklahoma and UTRGV. He holds the distinction of leading five different programs to the NCAA Tournament and added a second Final Four to his resume in 2016 at Oklahoma.
Joining Kruger in the 2022 class are former coaches John Beilein, Jim Calhoun, Jerry Krause and Roy Williams, along with former players Richard Hamilton (Connecticut), Larry Miller (North Carolina), Frank Selvy (Furman), and the late Jimmy Walker (Providence).
