SWX Right Now-Sports for Spokane, CdA, Tri-Cities, WABeyond the Broadcast: Who is Jerry Kraus?

Jerry Kraus is Gonzaga's Director of Basketball Operations. So what, you ask? What does that mean? To put it simply: a lot.

To be Director of Basketball Operations is to take care of the administrative duties of the organization. At least that's what most collegiate programs do with the position. Kraus, a former coach and teacher of the game of basketball, takes a much more empirical approach to the job.

"Mine is a little bit different because I hope I can have a positive impact because I try to evaluate what we're doing," said Kraus. "With my experience, background – subjective evaluation. But also objective evaluations for both our games and player performance."

Basically, to put it simply, Kraus looks at the statistics and proves what works and what doesn't. He takes a look at the game as a whole and assigns a number grade to it. He also grades the players and their individual performance – not to say there aren't exceptions to the grade.

"Like you say, statistics can lie but over the long run the objectivity is there and they don't lie," said Kraus.

Take the Illinois game for instance – the Zags' last game and a game they lost. Kraus said, as a team, Gonzaga graded out "very poorly".

"That was one of the lowest grades that we've had in a year and a half," he admitted, saying they met two out of 20 team goals that day.

"That should tell you a lot," Kraus said. "But interesting to me we meet two our of 20 team goals, we're close on a lot of them, and we're there near the end of the game! I mean, we had a chance to win that game."

Kraus said some of his measurement ideas date as far back as when Ohio State won the national championship when Bobby Knight was a player. They came specifically from a junior high school math teacher in Ohio that came up with ways to measure team performance. Since then he's added, subtracted and tweaked them to near perfection. And what a different they – and he – has made at Gonzaga.