Here’s how Mark Turgeon became KC Roos’ next hoops coach — and his game-plan now
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Turgeon returns to Midwest, aims to rebuild Kansas City Roos program quickly.
- Plan centers on local recruiting, transfers from portal and junior‑college signings.
- Administration pledges NIL and booster support, seeks upgraded on‑campus arena.
Mark Turgeon’s hire as head men’s basketball coach for the Kansas City Roos is a union 30 years in the making.
An assistant coach for the Oregon Ducks at the time, Turgeon was 29 when he first interviewed to take over the UMKC hoops program from head coach and athletic director Lee Hunt.
That was in 1996. A Topeka native, Turgeon had been a Kansas Jayhawks point guard for head coach Larry Brown. Later, he was on Brown’s staff when Danny Manning led KU to the 1988 national title at KC’s Kemper Arena.
Hunt, the best coach in UMKC history with 113 wins, was impressed with the young coach’s resume and recommended him for the job, Hunt told The Star. But the university wanted a coach with more experience, Hunt said, and instead hired Bob Sundvold — a head coach at nearby Division II Central Missouri and, previously, a longtime assistant at Mizzou under the legendary Norm Stewart.
After Sundvold’s hire in Kansas City, both parties — the Roos and Turgeon — traveled Robert Frost-like roads.
Sundvold’s Roos teams went 43-70 in four years before he was fired. To this day, the program has yet to reach an NCAA Tournament. A spot in the 2017 College Basketball Invitational quarterfinals remains the only Division I postseason appearance the Roos have had.
Turgeon, meanwhile, spent another year at Oregon and then a year as an NBA assistant with the Philadelphia 76ers. Then he got his first head coaching job with Jacksonville State in 1998.
Hunt, a former assistant coach at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, recalled phoning the Jacksonville State athletic director and recommending Turgeon for the job.
“As I look back on it, I should have hired him all along,” Hunt, now 91, told The Star with a laugh.
Turgeon — who celebrates his 61st birthday on Thursday, Feb. 5 — went on to enjoy an accomplished career as a program-builder and player’s coach. The Topeka native led Wichita State to a magical Sweet Sixteen run in 2006; sent Texas A&M to four consecutive NCAA appearances; and most recently guided Maryland to five NCAAs — including a Sweet Sixteen — in 11 years as the Terrapins’ head coach.
After parting ways with Maryland in December 2021, Turgeon had worked as a TV analyst and consultant. He said his consulting endeavors helped him see the new college basketball world for what it is: Thanks to the transfer portal and NIL (name, image, likeness), a vastly different landscape than the one in which he last worked.
The Roos job is one of just a handful that Turgeon said he would’ve considered. He told The Star he wanted to be back home to the Midwest and this was the right opportunity.
Since the announcement of his hire on Sunday, he and his son Will, who will be coming along with him to KC as an assistant, have hit the ground running.
“Coaching is still coaching,” he said. “The difference is every year you have to sign multiple players.
“I think college basketball, quite honestly, is in a better place (today) because there’s more foreign players coming over, because they get paid. There’s more guys sticking around as they get paid, so I think it’s in a better place. It’s tougher for our level.”
Turgeon’s hire comes less than a month after UMKC announced that Marvin Menzies wouldn’t return as coach for the 2026-27 season. The Roos are currently 4-19 overall, 1-8 in the Summit League — one win removed from last place.
How Mark Turgeon got the call home
For UMKC, the process of bringing aboard Turgeon was fairly swift.
Vice chancellor and director of athletics Dr. Brandon Martin and Turgeon exchanged around 20 phone calls over the past few weeks, working out details. Turgeon said he is satisfied with his base salary and budget for incoming coaching staff, which is still being built.
He said his requisites for Martin and chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal included an NIL budget that’s up to par with the rest of the Summit League.
“In today’s world,” he said, “the NIL money is something that’s important to be successful. So I feel like we’re near the top, or close to the top of the Summit League.”
Turgeon knows more investment is needed to upgrade the program’s facilities. He wants to see the KC Roos play in a home gym that’s more similar to other teams’ across the conference. Swinney Center is one of the smallest venues in Division I.
The school wants to build an on-campus arena through a public-private partnership while playing home games inside Municipal Auditorium. Agrawal said Roos boosters are already planning to invest more into the program.
“We need a larger facility than what we have right now,” Agrawal said. “... We feel that he (Turgeon) will pretty quickly fill out Swinney, and we’ll be out of space.”
Turgeon sounded excited to dive into Kansas City’s local pool of basketball talent. His general game plan is to gather local recruits; bring home some KC natives via the transfer portal; and sign a few junior-college players.
Like his predecessors, he’s hoping hometown pride will attract more talent to the city’s lone Division I program.
“Not every kid on our team is going to be (from) Kansas City,” he said, “but we’re going to, no doubt, try to keep the best ones home.”
Former Wichita State players excited for Turgeon
Turgeon’s coaching prowess became readily apparent when he led Wichita State to the 2006 Sweet Sixteen as a No. 7 seed. At the time, it was the program’s deepest March run in 25 years.
It took Turgeon six years to find the right mix of Shockers, and a renovation of Koch Arena certainly helped. That season’s squad, which had gone to the NIT three straight years, escaped the non-conference schedule with a record of 9-2. The Shockers’ only losses to that point were against ranked Illinois and Michigan State; their wins included a victory over UMKC at Municipal Auditorium.
Then Wichita State started conference play with two straight wins and two straight losses, prompting Turgeon to call a team meeting inside the program’s old locker room. What ensued was an hours-long talk about aspirations for the year.
Turgeon told his players to remember where they began and how far they’d come.
This week, decades later, news of Turgeon’s re-emergence on the college-hoops scene made the rounds among some of his former WSU players. That particular meeting, several said, provides a great example of how Turgeon crafts relationships with the young men he coaches.
So much so that they remember it vividly to this day.
“I don’t think he quite thought that we deserved that yet,” former WSU forward Kyle Wilson recalled. “It was kind of an eye-opening moment for me and a bunch of 18- to 20-year-old kids that thought they had already reached the mountaintop. And in reality, that wasn’t even remotely the case. It’s those types of experiences that you’ve got to be able to pull together in his role.”
“He has a way of making you appreciate what you have, and making you want to run through a wall when you play for him,” former WSU guard and Kansas City, Kansas native Ryan Martin said. “He makes you believe in yourself when you probably can’t on some days. And he wants you to always play the game the right way.”
Several players from that Shockers team, like Wilson, went on to play hoops overseas. Martin, a former UMKC staffer, is now a coach and trainer who remains heavily influenced by Turgeon’s tactics and demeanor.
Ryan Martin and others wish Turgeon well and are confident he’ll strengthen the Roos, much as he did with the Shockers at Wichita State.
“You’ve got to have a relationship with your coach,” Wilson said. “You’ve got to believe in what your coach is trying to do. And he was able to kind of build that from nothing, really, in his time at Wichita State and put the school back on the map.”
“He’s a proven winner, and he’s able to turn around programs,” Martin said. “So I think there’s gonna be an unbelievable buzz because of his resume and the kids he’ll be able to get there and attract to come play at Kansas City.”
As for Turgeon, he stopped short of comparing this newest venture at UMKC with the one he undertook in Wichita, because today’s roster rules can make teams better so much faster.
The plan is to win soon, if not quickly, in Kansas City.
“I imagine we’ll be better in Year 2 than Year 1, but, yeah, we expect to be good next year,” Turgeon said. “(The) coaches I’m hiring, the players I’ve been assigned, we all expect to be good next year. We want to be a really, really good team in the Summit League in Year 1.”
This story was originally published February 5, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
