Inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, then-UNLV athletic director Mike Hamrick jotted contract details down on a napkin.
Years. Salary. Buyout. It was all there. And just like that, Lon Kruger was back in college basketball.
"I remember it like it was yesterday," Hamrick said.
Kruger, the 63-year-old head men's basketball coach at Oklahoma, revisits the Mountain State today as his No. 3 Sooners take on No. 10 West Virginia. This is Kruger's 12th season back in college basketball, and his Oklahoma team has been in the top three of the Associated Press poll the last 10 weeks, including three weeks at No. 1.
It is a journey that restarted with the help of Hamrick, Marshall's athletic director and a state native, and a former WVU athletics administrator who endorsed Kruger to be UNLV's hoops coach in the spring of 2004.
Here is how Kruger rejuvenated UNLV's program, parlayed that into the OU job and ascended to the top of college basketball:
During the 2003-04 season, UNLV's coach, Charlie Spoonhour, told Hamrick he wanted to give up coaching. Hamrick laid out a plan for Spoonhour to finish the season and make the announcement, but Spoonhour, who passed away in 2012, had other ideas.
Spoonhour wanted to immediately resign.
Hamrick tapped Jay Spoonhour, Charlie's son, to be the interim coach and conclude the season. Meanwhile, Hamrick started going through the Rolodex of coaches in his mind and kept stopping on one name.
Kruger was out of coaching at the time, living in Phoenix and watching his son play at Arizona State. He had coached four seasons at Pan-American, four at Kansas State, six at Florida and four at Illinois before getting the itch to coach in the NBA.
He lasted only two full seasons and a part of a third before he was fired by the Atlanta Hawks during the 2002-03 season.
That part didn't bother Hamrick. He, like most athletic directors, was an annual attendee at the Final Four. He was there in 1994 as No. 3 Florida made the NCAA tournament semifinals as a 29-win team.
"I watched him when he was there with Florida," Hamrick said, "and all I could think about was this was a football school and he's got Florida in the Final Four."
Kruger stayed at Florida for two more seasons before heading to Illinois. He was replaced at Florida by Marshall coach Billy Donovan.
In 2004, though, Kruger was out of the game on the professional and amateur level. Hamrick had him at the top of his list, and had the endorsement from someone inside the offices at UNLV.
Brad Rothermel was the athletic director at UNLV from 1981 until 1990, and Hamrick worked there under Rothermel for his first job in collegiate athletics. Rothermel came to UNLV from WVU, where he worked for two seasons. Rothermel had a stop before Morgantown though - Kansas State. That was where Kruger worked for four seasons before Florida, and he had taken the Wildcats to four consecutive NCAA tournaments.
Hamrick brought Rothermel back to UNLV in 2003 as a special adviser to the athletic director, and the former Rebels AD gave Hamrick the thumbs up.
"That's when I got on a plane with a booster and flew to Phoenix," Hamrick said. "I spent three or four hours with Lon and his wife, and he agreed to be the next coach at UNLV."
The next day Kruger and Hamrick had dinner with the school's president, and then Hamrick and Kruger finalized the particulars in the lobby of the Mandalay Bay. The next day, UNLV's attorney sent the official contract to Kruger's attorney and the deal was done.
Kruger was announced as UNLV's head coach the Monday after the conference tournament ended.
"It was the easiest coaching hire I've ever had," Hamrick said.
Hamrick has watched Kruger replicate what he did at UNLV, which had two NCAA tournament appearances in 15 seasons before Kruger broke through with a 30-win season in 2007. He won 17 games in each of his first two seasons, and then rattled off four NCAA tournament appearances in five seasons, and averaged 25.4 wins in that span before departing for the Sooners.
"Not at all surprised," Hamrick said. "He's got pretty much the same staff in place."
Oklahoma was in disarray when Kruger arrived, too. The Sooners had posted consecutive losing seasons when Kruger was hired before the 2011-12 season, and he finished 15-16 in his inaugural season in Norman. That, however, was followed by season win totals of 20, 23 and 24 before this year's surge to the top of the polls and a possible No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament next month.
"The thing I like about him is he doesn't try to blow the program up and build it back," Hamrick said. "He just comes in and subtly creates his own culture. I watched him do that at UNLV over a short period of time, and then the next thing you know look how many games we were winning.
"He was an athletic director's dream as a coach."