NORMAN — Rebuilding a basketball program was nothing new for Lon Kruger when he arrived as Oklahoma's coach in 2011.

Now in his fifth season, Kruger has the Sooners 20-3, ranked No. 3 in the country and with a chance to seize control of the Big 12 race Saturday when they face No. 6 Kansas at Lloyd Noble Center (1:30 p.m., ESPN).

In the first 29 years of Kruger's collegiate coaching career, he'd never had a team ranked in the top five, but at each of his previous stops — Texas-Pan American, Kansas State, Florida, Illinois and UNLV — he'd gone through the same process he's gone through in Norman.

“We kind of came in with the same approach we always do and that's to take the current group, the group that we inherited, and just coach them up and pump them up with confidence and try to help them improve,” longtime Kruger assistant Steve Henson said. “(We) just had the big picture in mind from the beginning, and right off the bat, we put a big emphasis on getting better in the classroom and just being good citizens and being well-respected in the community and then on the court as well.”