Jerry Krause (basketball, born 1936)

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Jerry Krause (April 3, 1936 – May 24, 2023) was an American college basketball coach and administrator. Born in Cedar Bluffs, Nebraska, he grew up on a farm and began his career in coaching at the high school level in Iowa and Loveland, Colorado, from 1959 to 1964. He then worked as an assistant coach at Colorado State College (now the University of Northern Colorado) until 1967, and afterward led Eastern Washington University’s men’s basketball team from 1967 to 1985. With EWU, his teams won 261 games and lost 197, guiding the program from the NAIA to NCAA Division I.

In 1985 Krause joined Gonzaga University as a volunteer coach and later became the director of basketball operations, a role he held from 2001 to 2015. Beyond coaching, he was a longtime basketball administrator and scholar. He chaired the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) research committee starting in 1966 and served on the NCAA Basketball Rules Committee, becoming its rules chair in the late 1980s. He co-invented a tool to measure rim tension with Bruce Abbott in the early 1990s, which helped shape NCAA rim guidelines.

Krause received several honors, including the Cliff Wells Appreciation Award (1998) and the Guardians of the Game Pillar Award (2003) from the NABC. He was inducted into multiple halls of fame, such as the NAIA Hall of Fame (2000), NASPE Hall of Fame (2000), EWU Athletics Hall of Fame (2005), Inland Northwest Sports Hall of Fame (2013), and the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame (2022). He also taught and wrote about sport and spent time as a visiting professor at the United States Military Academy.

Jerry Krause died of colon cancer at his home in Cheney, Washington, at the age of 87.