There’s No Substitute For Desire Vandals Just Can’t Replace Hard-Working Baumann

He’s on his third basketball coach. One was fired; one left voluntarily.

His team switched conferences from the Big Sky to the tougher Big West.

Idaho has been trying to shift him benchward for four years, but that hasn’t happened.

Kris Baumann has staying power, even if everything around him seemingly doesn’t.

“That’s what I was taught,” says the talkative senior guard from New Plymouth, Idaho. “Just to hang through things.”

He’s hanging out on an Idaho team that is 9-7 overall, 3-3 in the Big West, tied for third in the Eastern Division. Pacific (11-8, 4-2) visits UI’s Kibbie Dome tonight and Boise State (11-8, 3-3) visits on Saturday.

Recruited by then-coach Joe Cravens, Baumann showed up four years ago in Moscow and was badgered during informal practices.

Just-graduated Vandals’ stars Orlando Lightfoot and Deon Watson picked on the kid.

“I got thrown in the bleachers the first two weeks,” Baumann remembers.

Baumann once was caught guarding Lightfoot in the paint. Just before scoring, Lightfoot turned and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ Most of the time, though, Baumann was on Lightfoot’s and Watson’s teams. And those teams usually whipped UI’s eventual starting five.

When the wins kept piling up, Lightfoot and Watson noticed Baumann was part of the reason.

Baumann barely played as a freshman behind Benjy Johnson and Mark Leslie. As a sophomore, he started nine games and had a modest 5.3 scoring average.

He noticed UI was recruiting lots of guards, such as Reggie Rose. That trend continued, even after Cravens was fired and Kermit Davis came on board for a one-year stay.

“He told me at one point in the fall, ‘They’ve been trying to replace me for four years,”’ said current coach Dave Farrar, who was an assistant under Davis. “I take that the right way. He knows what we can do and he takes a lot of pride in it.”

Baumann’s pride showed in Cravens’ final days. He scored 15 points and hit several clutch shots in UI’s win over Montana in the opening round of the ‘96 Big Sky Tournament. Baumann thought the win saved Cravens’ job.

It didn’t.

“I was young and attached to the coach who recruited me. For me to see what happened to him wasn’t a very good deal,” said Baumann, whose dad, Rick, is athletic director at Treasure Valley Community College in Ontario, Ore., and previously the school’s baseball coach. “I thought about leaving.”

Instead Davis arrived and Baumann stayed.

“The first thing he said was, ‘You’re not going anywhere. I like what you can do and I want you here,”’ Baumann said.

Baumann started 22 games as junior. But as the season wore on, Baumann wore out.

He’d play 5 minutes and look as if he just ran a marathon. His shooting touch abandoned him. Late in the season, Davis ordered him to quit shooting 3-pointers. Considering 74 percent of Baumann’s shots are 3s, that’s akin to taking the black book away from President Clinton.

“Coach brought me in and said, ‘Are you sick? Using drugs? What’s the matter?”’ Baumann said. “I told him, ‘I don’t know. I can’t move.”’

Baumann eventually was diagnosed with strep throat. But the root cause of his exhaustion was apparently overwork, especially after an injury to Rose.

Farrar helped Baumann through a traumatic ‘96-‘97 season, and offered tips on taking better care of himself. This year, Baumann rated as the team’s strongest player during conditioning tests.

He averages nearly 30 minutes per game, second-highest on the team. He’s shooting 44 percent on 3s and close to 100 percent in the interview room.

Baumann’s straight-forward, humor-laden responses make him the team’s most quotable player. He pokes fun at everyone, including coaches.

Freshman guard “Adam Miller is ‘Little Wojo’ (after Duke’s Steve Wojciechowski) because he never gets tired,” Baumann said. “Avery Curry, well, coach calls him ‘Prima Donna.’ He’s got those Air Jordans (shoes) and everyone else has the white Nikes.

“Mao (Tosi) is the ‘Alaskan Assassin.’ Josh Toal is ‘The Rev’ - he picked that up somewhere along the line.”

Baumann takes his share of static.

“They get on me about everything,” he said. “Sometimes it’s my shot selection or bonehead plays I make.”

The chatter makes for lively practices and games.

“I’m on Mao all the time about stretching and doing his back exercises,” Farrar says. “So before I can say anything, Baumann’s going to say, ‘Mao, you done your exercises?’ It’s just a little sarcasm that everybody’s receptive to.”

Farrar called Baumann, who hopes to launch a coaching career at Idaho next year as a graduate assistant, the “soul” of the team.

“He’s the guy that will always wear his Idaho gear 20 years from now,” Farrar said, “and you need guys like that.”

Baumann fits in with a blue-collar team.

“Some said we’d be lucky to win five games,” he says. “But these guys, I’ll tell you, are flat tough and they’re winners. Coach Farrar didn’t get the most talented guys, but he got guys who are willing to work.”

Baumann included.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo