For Kentucky’s coaches and Kerr Kriisa, this is a basketball marriage years in the making

ben roberts

Fri, Oct 25, 2024, 6:30 a.m.·15 min read

As soon as it became clear that Mark Pope was going to be Kentucky’s new basketball coach, Cody Fueger — his longtime assistant — received a call.

It wasn’t from Pope, asking if Fueger would like to follow him from BYU to UK.

It wasn’t from a family member, inquiring about his future job status.

The face on the other end of the video call belonged to Kerr Kriisa, and the 23-year-old point guard had a message for the college basketball coach who had been pursuing him for years.

Fueger was smiling before he even accepted the call.

“We’re going to Kentucky!” Kriisa said as soon as he saw Fueger’s face.

Sitting in his office six months later, Pope listened to that story, shook his head and smiled.

“He was FaceTiming Cody before Cody got the job?” he said. “That’s so good. That’s great. That’s Kerr.”

It’s true. Fueger hadn’t been offered a job as an assistant coach at Kentucky yet. Technically, Pope hadn’t even been officially introduced as the next leader of the Wildcats. But Fueger wasn’t surprised to hear from Kriisa that day, and Pope wasn’t surprised when he heard about the call later on.

Both had known Kriisa far too long, which meant they knew to expect anything.

Kriisa grinned when the story of the FaceTime to Fueger was relayed back to him for confirmation. It happened, he acknowledged with a chuckle, but he didn’t actually know when he picked up the phone that day that it would end with him becoming a Wildcat.

Fueger, he explained, was the first college basketball coach to contact him when he was a teenager playing for a professional team in Europe. At the time, Kriisa — a native of Estonia — had given no real thought to playing college ball in the United States, but Pope and Fueger persisted.

They missed on him that time around. Kriisa committed to Arizona, where he played three seasons before entering the transfer portal. They missed on him again last spring, when he committed to West Virginia following a second recruitment from the BYU coaches.

And when he decided to leave WVU in early April, there they were again.

“Every time I’ve been in the portal — even coming from overseas — Cody was one of the first people to reach out to me,” Kriisa said. “So just like previous times, he was the first one to call me. I didn’t pick up. He texted me. I didn’t answer. And then I basically let it be for a couple of weeks.

“And then when Pope got the job here, I jokingly called Cody, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m coming. Don’t worry. Like, we don’t need to talk about anything else. I’m coming.’ As a joke. But it turned out to, I guess, not to be a joke.”

Kerr Kriisa has been a starting point guard for Arizona and West Virginia, and he should play an important role on Mark Pope’s first Kentucky team.

Why Kriisa said yes to Kentucky

When Kriisa initially ignored Fueger’s contact after hitting the transfer portal in April, he wasn’t trying to be rude. He just didn’t know what to say. Or, more to the point, he didn’t want to say it.

“I just felt bad, because I probably wouldn’t have gone to BYU,” Kriisa said. “And I kind of — I tend to do that. I didn’t want to let them down, because I liked them so much as human beings, and they were always there for me and always reaching out to me and always checking in on me. So I kind of thought it would be easier for myself to kind of just not even talk to them. So it’s easier to say no to them. That was my kind of mindset.”

The relationship goes back years.

“We started recruiting him my first summer at BYU. Gosh, that was the summer of 2019,” Fueger said. “And we were a big reason why he even came to college. He wasn’t even thinking about coming to college at all, because he could have gone and made money right away.”

That’s also true, says Kriisa, who was so confused by his first contact with Fueger more than five years ago that he initially thought he was on the receiving end of a scam.

Fueger was the very first college coach to contact him. Kriisa was playing for a Lithuanian professional team at the time, and he’d already been part of pro teams in Estonia and Germany. He didn’t know much about college basketball, and he knew next to nothing about the workings of the NCAA.

Fueger told him he’d need to fill out some paperwork — along with a $50 fee — so they could look into his eligibility status.

“And I’m like, ‘He’s trying to scam me,’” Kriisa says now of the application fee. “‘Like, you want me there, you should be able to pay, right?’ So it was just like the little things, because I knew nothing. I had no idea about colleges and how stuff works.”

Once Fueger was able to convince Kriisa that he wasn’t some American con man, the recruitment commenced. But while he was impressed with both Fueger and Pope as people and coaches, Kriisa never really sounded close to committing to the Cougars during either of his first two recruitments. And when he hit the portal for the final time in April, the head coach at Kentucky was John Calipari, who was still a week away from announcing his resignation.

If things hadn’t changed, Pope and Fueger would’ve gone 0-for-3 in their pursuit of Kriisa.

“You know, BYU is a different spot, and it’s not for everybody,” Kriisa said of the university, referencing the unique set of policies it has in place for students. “And I don’t know if that would have fit my — not lifestyle — but … I’m just a different person.”

Kriisa didn’t disparage anything about the BYU experience. He just didn’t think it would be the place best suited for him, and he didn’t want to let down coaches he respected so much for a third time.

“I’m super grateful and super thankful for Cody and all the staff, but especially Cody,” he said. “Because Cody was wasting his, I don’t know, first eight, nine months on me, and then I just had to say no. But yeah, I’m in college because of Cody, for sure.”

So Kriisa picked up the phone as a joke on that day when Pope got the Kentucky job, but — after he was done messing around with Fueger, who obviously knew at the time that it wasn’t a true verbal commitment — they caught up with each other and had what Kriisa called a “good friend-to-friend” conversation.

He said it was the first time they had spoken since West Virginia’s game against BYU in early February, an 86-73 Cougars win in which they showed off their high-octane offense. Kriisa thought back on his previous recruitments with BYU, that game in Morgantown and the college basketball blue-blood that Pope and Fueger would soon be calling home.

“I just remembered the style that they played and how annoying it was to defend against the style of play,” Kriisa said. “So it was just like, you know, I wanted to be part of it.”

UK guard Kerr Kriisa is known for his personality on and off the basketball court.

Why UK’s coaches wanted Kriisa

What would have happened if Kriisa had ended up at Kentucky and Fueger had stayed behind at BYU?

“Yeah, that would have been bad,” Kriisa said, smiling at the scenario that never happened. “But I also knew that Pope doesn’t operate without Cody.”

Pope and Fueger were on the BYU staff together 10 years ago, when Pope got his first head coaching job at Utah Valley. He hired Fueger to his first job as a full assistant there, and the two are now going into their 10th season with that arrangement. Fueger has been Pope’s right-hand man over the past decade and is the “offensive coordinator” behind his forward-thinking approach to scoring the ball.

Kriisa was right to assume that Fueger would follow Pope to Kentucky, and he was right to assume that Pope would want him to play here, as well.

“Well, we’d been recruiting him for seven years,” Pope said, admitting that he was exaggerating the length of that pursuit to drive home just how much they wanted Kriisa to be a part of their team.

The UK coach thought back to the first time he saw him in person. Pope traveled to Lithuania five years ago to see Kriisa with his pro team there.

“I just fell in love with the kid,” he said. “Like, his whole demeanor on the court. His fearlessness. … I like him. I like him as a kid and as a human being. I like his swag, and I like his vulnerability.”

Kriisa is an explosive offensive playmaker, a hard-to-defend point guard with range that extends well beyond the 3-point line and a shiftiness with the ball that few possess at this level. He was a two-year starter for two top-10 Arizona teams, as well as West Virginia’s starting point guard last season.

He’s also one of the more polarizing players in college basketball. Kriisa often comes across as brash on the court, and his penchant for trash-talking gets lots of negative attention. As Pope and his coaching staff built their first UK roster with talented but unassuming players, Kriisa — one of the final additions — appeared to be an outlier.

That’s not really the case, according to the head coach.

“In some ways, he fits perfectly. He brings a lot to the table,” Pope said. “Like, Kerr is what he is. He is just a free-standing entity that — you know, I think you probably love to play with him and hate to play against him.”

Before the Wildcats started their preseason fall camp, they went on a weekend retreat together. That Sunday morning, Pope had the players huddle up and tell each other what they were going to commit to the team. Kriisa, he said, pointed out how the coaches had been talking about “pace” and “thrust” all summer as the identity for how they wanted these Cats to play.

“He’s like, ‘I’m gonna bring the greatest thrust in the country, the greatest pace in the country, to this team.’ And he’s actually borne that out every single day of practice,” Pope said. “And that is the heart of what we do, right? He shoots the ball, and he’s an IQ defender, and so there’s so many ways where he fits us exactly.”

The real games haven’t started yet, but Kriisa has also shown some personal sacrifice already.

There were outside questions regarding how Kriisa would handle the situation he was walking into. With 93 starts in 99 career games at the high-major level, he could, presumably, be a featured player just about anywhere.

But UK already had a commitment from star point guard Lamont Butler by the time Kriisa committed, and the Wildcats’ roster is stacked with talented wings. Where does Kriisa fit in? That, he has said from the beginning, is the coaches’ job to figure out, and he’s also made clear he has full faith in them to make the right decisions for the team.

Kriisa referred to Butler as “PG1” early in the summer, and he’s apparently backing up the team-first talk behind the scenes.

Before they were teammates, Butler, who spent the past four years at San Diego State, and Kriisa played against each other. “I didn’t really like Kerr like that,” Butler said, noting that in-your-face reputation that rubs opponents the wrong way.

And then they found themselves on the same team. And started talking. And hanging out.

“Now he’s my guy, for sure,” Butler said. “It’s definitely been a joy to be around him. He ended up being way different than I expected.”

Butler spoke of Kriisa as someone who can bring a room together with his personality (and then make them laugh once he has everyone’s attention). He and other UK players have also talked about finding a 23-year-old teammate with plenty of depth beneath the surface.

“I can’t say what the (outside) perception is, but he is all those things,” Pope said. “He’s all of them. It’s what makes him beautiful. Guys that wear their heart on their sleeve, like, there’s all the things that come with that. … He wears it on his sleeve, and he cares, and you can’t be around him and not know how much he cares.

“And he is a competitor’s competitor. Like, his happy place is when he’s competing, and he’s going to overflow with competitive spirit. And I love every part of that.”

Kerr Kriisa passes the ball during drills on Big Blue Madness night in Rupp Arena.

What’s next for Kerr Kriisa?

Kentucky fans haven’t gotten a real glimpse at Kriisa the player just yet. He missed last week’s Blue-White scrimmage with a hamstring injury and sat out the team’s exhibition game against Kentucky Wesleyan on Wednesday night as a precaution.

But Kriisa told the Herald-Leader that he shouldn’t be sidelined much longer. “I feel good,” he said this week, and he looked good while going through rather extensive pregame workouts on his own before the Wesleyan game.

Kriisa also explained that he was playing injured at the end of both of his seasons as Arizona’s starting point guard, and he had disappointing games in the NCAA Tournament those two years. He doesn’t want anything to linger this season with Kentucky.

“Obviously, when it happened I was a little bit mad, but on the other hand, it could be way worse,” Kriisa said. “I’d rather have it now than in the middle of the season or the end of the season. I tend to have pretty bad injuries in my years when I was at Arizona — all my March Madnesses were like fully injured. So I’ve had some bad luck with that.”

Kriisa said he would “for sure” play in UK’s regular season opener against Wright State on Nov. 4.

He can’t wait to get back on the court.

His most recent season of college basketball couldn’t have gone much worse. Shortly after arriving at West Virginia, his new head coach — Hall of Famer Bob Huggins — was replaced following a DUI arrest.

Kriisa actually jumped back in the transfer portal for a couple of days after that, but West Virginia retained Huggins’ staff for the season, and he was already comfortable with those assistants. He had also just settled into his new apartment in Morgantown and didn’t really want to pick up and start over somewhere else.

The NCAA suspended Kriisa for the first nine games of the season for accepting impermissible benefits. The Mountaineers had a losing record by the time Kriisa debuted, and it didn’t get any better from there. WVU finished 9-23 with a 4-14 mark in the Big 12.

“It was tough,” Kriisa said. “It was tough mentally. It was bad, because, well, I’m used to winning. We won nine games. I was suspended in the beginning of the year. My coach, who I think so highly of, Hugs, got fired. I think it was an unfair situation for everybody, and we just had to kind of deal with it. But, yeah, it was a sad, sad year.”

Kriisa was 5-18 in the 23 games he played for West Virginia. Over the previous two seasons at Arizona, the Wildcats had a 57-11 record in the games in which he appeared, almost always as a starter.

That’s the kind of winning he wants to get back to, and Kriisa says he’s willing to sacrifice personal glory to do it. When it was his turn to be introduced at Big Blue Madness two weeks ago, Kriisa danced delightedly under the banners in Rupp Arena — Beyonce’s “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” blaring over the sound system — pointing to his finger, where an NCAA title ring might go. The song choice was a symbol of his team goals at UK this season.

The crowd, of course, went nuts for it.

He’s also clearly at home with this Kentucky coaching staff, more than five years after he first met them.

Kriisa feels comfortable enough to get in little digs at Pope and Fueger here and there.

When asked about Fueger’s innovative offense, Kriisa wondered aloud how he came up with it.

“I really don’t know where he got it, honestly,” he says with a mischievous grin. “Because I’ve seen his shot. Like, sometimes he’ll be shooting in the gym — I don’t think his shot looks too great. So I don’t know where he got the basketball instincts.”

Pope is just fine returning the favor. The UK coach explained that when Kriisa was transferring out of Arizona, he and Fueger were sure they would get his commitment, only for him to pick West Virginia instead.

“He told us no again,” Pope says. “And then we got a chance to go just abuse him at West Virginia last year.”

Fueger stayed above the fray. He’s just happy that a recruitment five years in the making — with two failures along the way — has finally resulted in this. After all that time and effort, he’ll finally get to unleash Kriisa as part of his offense. He beamed at the thought.

“Down the line, we got him. We got him,” Fueger said. “That dude is awesome. He wants to be here so bad. He wants to win a championship. He’s all in.”

Who do you think made the BEST entrance at Big Blue Madness?

Kerr Kriisa was my personal favorite. pic.twitter.com/8kwAsGYPn4
— Mario A Maitland (@MarioMaitland_3) October 13, 2024