It's easy to figure out why Darris Kilgour could tie the National Lacrosse League's all-time

record for career coaching victories tonight when his Buffalo Bandits face the Orlando Titans

in HSBC Arena (7:30 p.m., Radio 1520 AM). It's not because he likes to win, although Kilgour

certainly does. It's a case that he hates to lose.

Make that, HATES TO LOSE — and is driven to do it as infrequently as possible.

Kilgour doesn't even remember his first of 92 wins as an NLL coach. But he remembers the

first of 58 losses, vividly, in his coaching debut for the Washington Power.

"We were up, 17-11, and we lost, 20-19," Kilgour said about the game against Buffalo on

Dec. 30, 2000. "That was the team I had back then. That was the biggest challenge I ever had.

... "

Even discussing that game, nine years later, you can hear the anger and disappointment in

Kilgour's voice as he relives it in his mind.

"... They [his players] made a lot of dumb plays," Kilgour continued. "At 17-11, you sit on

the clock. All you have to do is let the possession time run out, and you win the game ... "

Kilgour got that first win a day later, a 13-12 decision against Toronto. But he never was

a good loser. Ask his brother Rich, who scored the game-winning goal for the Bandits in his

brother's NLL coaching debut.

"One time in a summer league, we both played on one of those stacked teams in Brampton,"

Rich Kilgour said. "We were 19-0 going in. It was a meaningless game. We sat some people.

Peterborough beat us on a last-second fluke. On the ride home, Darris didn't say a word for

the whole two hours and 15 minutes.

"That's Darris in a nutshell. It's like a poker player — you don't remember the great

hands, but you remember the bad beats."

Darris Kilgour goes into tonight's game one win behind Les Bartley's all-time record.

Bartley, the former coach in Buffalo, Hamilton and Toronto, had a career record of 93-38. He

died in 2005.

The connections between the two go back to 1992, when Kilgour showed up for the first-ever

training camp of the Bandits.

"I had no idea who he [Bartley] was," Kilgour said. "He was a friend of [general manager]

John Mouradian, and part of the coaching staff."

The Bandits started 0-3 under head coach Buff McCready. Since it was only an eight-game

schedule, Buffalo needed a drastic turnaround, so Mouradian promoted Bartley to head coach and

demoted McCready to assistant coach. The odd part was that the public was never told about the

switch at the time; McCready, for example, still met with the media after games.

Buffalo beat Pittsburgh, 23-13, in Bartley's first game as head coach, and he won the next

16 regular season games as well.

"That was us coming into a new league, with new rules," Kilgour said about the slow start.

"We had the best team. We didn't understand what was going on before. But there's one big

thing Les did, and that was keeping us in focus."

John Tavares was a teammate of Kilgour's during the Bandits' glory days of winning three

championships in their first five years under Bartley, and he is playing for coach Kilgour

now.

"I didn't think of him [Kilgour] as a future coach," Tavares said. "I never thought about

those things. But when I think of Darris now, I'd say it doesn't surprise me. He coaches

exactly the same way he plays. There's the same intensity, same expectation of teammates

reaching their capability. That's how he played, and he hasn't changed one bit."

Kilgour watched as Bartley won seven NLL championships between his stops in Buffalo and

Toronto.

"He was not an X's and O's coach," Kilgour said. "He wasn't really a lacrosse player or

thinker. He was a motivator."

"Both of them are different in their own way," Tavares said about the two coaches. "They

are excellent coaches. Both do something right. The records show that they have great winning

percentages. Not only do they have the most wins, but they have a great winning percentage.

That's a key fact to look at.

"To compare both is like night and day. Both are very intense. ... Darris knows where

everyone should go, and expects everyone to know everything as well. Les, he liked to organize

things in a very structured way. It's hard to compare the two. They're both good. Both gave

players an opportunity to play and to excel."

He ran up against Bartley in the playoffs in Kilgour's first two years of NLL coaching.

It's easy to tell he still didn't like losing those games either.

"We lost to Les in the semis both years [2001, 2002]," Kilgour said. "The first year, we

lost on an overtime goal by Kim Squire. The next year, we lost on an overtime goal in the last

10 seconds. We were right there."

It's taken Kilgour longer than anyone expected to get within striking distance of the

record. The Bandits are 2-6 this year and barely breathing in the playoff race.

Still, wins number 93 and 94 will come at some point, maybe even in the next couple of

weeks. And when they do, Kilgour will put aside the memories of losses, if only briefly, to

remember the players that helped him reach this coaching milestone.

"It's a big tribute to the players I've had," Kilgour said. "You can be the best coach in

the world, but if you don't have the players, you don't have the wins. ... Every league is a

players' league. You can steal some wins, but you can't take a bad team and make them great."