Jonathan Krueger’s ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ NCAA championship game

Michael Reaves was beyond frustrated.

In the immediate seconds after Kentucky’s bid for a perfect season was foiled by Wisconsin in the 2015 Final Four, the Kentucky Kernel photographer found himself screened out by scurrying television reporters toting cameras. So it was his Kernel colleague, Jonathan Krueger, who got the shot of a dejected Willie Cauley-Stein walking from the Lucas Oil Stadium court with a gaggle of celebrating Badgers in the background.

A graduate of South Oldham High School, Reaves had grown up a University of Kentucky basketball fan, spending many an afternoon pretending to be Gerald Fitch or Keith Bogans hitting shots to give UK victories in imaginary Final Four games.

Seeing the unbeaten Wildcats fall in the real Final Four in Indianapolis had an emotional impact on Reaves that was not felt by Krueger, who was from Perrysburg, Ohio.

The next morning, with Kentucky’s season over, Reaves got up and drove to Kentucky to attend Easter Sunday church services with his family.

Even though the Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s independent student newspaper, had valid media credentials to cover the national championship game and a motel room paid for through the end of the Final Four, Reaves saw no reason to go back.

Until Krueger dialed his cell phone.

Says Reaves: “He said, ‘This is the national championship. You are already credentialed … I know Kentucky is not in it, but you should definitely come back. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

As those words were spoken, how could either college student have guessed that Kruger’s lifetime would span only 12 more days?

‘We were psyched’

For the Kentucky Kernel photographers, the Final Four in Indianapolis had not gotten off to a stellar start.

When Reaves, Krueger — and the three Kernel reporters they were to share a room with — checked into an auxiliary NCAA Tournament media hotel, they were distressed by what they found.

The air conditioning did not work.

There were no towels.

There was mold in the shower.

We won’t discuss what they found in the toilet.

It was such a disappointment. Throughout Kentucky’s 2014-15 basketball season, the Kernel staff had been scrimping on travel expenses so they could stay in the media hotel at the Final Four.

True, some of the money saving had turned out to be fun. When Kentucky played in the NCAA Tournament Midwest Region in Cleveland, the Kentucky Kernel staffers covering the game had stayed in Krueger’s family home near Toledo.

Krueger introduced his UK classmates to his favorite local bagel place. He took them to Tony Packo’s Cafe, the local eatery renowned for its “famous Hungarian hot dogs” and celebrity-autographed hot dog buns.

At one point during the trip to Cleveland, Reaves used a GoPro camera and shot the Kernel staffers singing along to Maroon 5’s Sugar. “We loved, loved, loved that song,” Reaves said. “So we sang at the top of our lungs. It was fun.”

Yet after saving for the Final Four, to end up in a lousy room was too much. Reaves figures it was around 2 a.m. when the Kernel staffers decided on a course of action. They placed a middle-of-the-night phone call to an NCAA media liaison.

She moved the UK students to a different hotel.

When Kentucky advanced to the 2014 NCAA Tournament championship game, Reaves and Krueger had not gotten to cover it for the Kernel. So walking into Lucas Oil Stadium to cover the Final Four for the first time was exhilarating.

“Lucas Oil is just huge, remarkably big,” Reaves said. “We were psyched.”

During the Kentucky-Wisconsin game, Reaves and Krueger both got to photograph the game action from court side. “We had two floor seats at the Final Four, which normally doesn’t happen,” Reaves said. “We had agreed to send (the) Wisconsin (student paper) some pictures in exchange for sitting in their floor seat because they couldn’t send anyone.”

Which explains why, after Wisconsin broke Kentucky’s heart, Reaves found himself shooting celebration pictures of the Badgers.

“Bo Ryan going nuts,” he says of the then-Wisconsin coach.

That night, after all the stories were written and photographs edited, there was a moment to take stock of what they had covered.

“I had missed some photos and (Krueger) had gotten them,” Reaves said. “I was frustrated with a lot of things, and he was positive. He was like ‘It’s OK, we’re going to be fine. There will be another game, there will be another year.’”

Still, Reaves went home the next morning for Easter. Yet after Krueger called him, Reaves came back to Indianapolis to photograph the Duke-Wisconsin title game Monday night.

“We went, shot the game from up top, and it was a lot of fun,” Reaves said. “Duke won, celebrated, (and we) got some great pictures.”

Biggest regret

Nine days after they photographed an NCAA championship game together, the two Kernel photographers had planned to work together on one of Krueger’s school projects.

“He was working on a stop-motion thing. We had planned to go to Keeneland that morning, wanted to go at 5:45,” Reaves said. “But I hate early mornings. He got up, texted me, ‘Hey, you ready to go?’ I was like ‘Man, I’m not feeling well.’”

Reaves didn’t go. “Looking back,” he says, his voice cracking, “that’s like my biggest regret. I really wish I would have gone.”

Two mornings later, around 2 a.m. on Friday, April 17, Krueger and a friend were accosted by would-be robbers at the corner of East Maxwell Street and Transylvania Park near the UK campus.

The friend was beaten, had his shirt torn, but got away.

Krueger was shot in the chest. That morning, he was pronounced dead at UK Chandler Hospital. Five days before, he had turned 22.

Police arrested three people in the alleged murder, a 20-year-old, an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old.

Their cases are pending in the criminal justice system.

Absence

This school year, the inaugural Jonathan Krueger Memorial Scholarship was bestowed on the photographer who worked last year’s Final Four.

“It was bittersweet,” Reaves said. “We were friends, so I don’t want to say I was profiting off his loss, but I was benefiting off his loss, and that was hard. It felt selfish.”

He made his peace with that, Reaves said, “because through that scholarship, Jonathan has the opportunity to be forever remembered.”

When Kentucky faced Stony Brook last month in the first round of the 2016 men’s NCAA Tournament, Reaves was in Des Moines shooting photographs for the Kernel.

That night, Reaves strongly felt Krueger’s absence. He thought back to the phone call his friend made last April 5th to get him to return to Indianapolis lest he lose the chance to photograph a national championship game.

“I’ll always remember him saying, ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You can’t get this back,’” Reaves said.

This story was originally published April 2, 2016 at 5:22 PM with the headline "Jonathan Krueger’s ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ NCAA championship game."