By FRED KRONER
fred@sjodaily.com
Mike Mennenga shares just two things in common with the person he was eight years ago: his name and an undying passion for basketball.
In 2011-12, the Rantoul native was on hiatus from his dream job as a men’s college basketball coach.
He had spent the three previous years as an assistant at three different Division I universities, each stint separating him from his family, who was living in Buffalo, N.Y.
Mennenga was at Nicholls State University (Thiboduax, La.) in 2009, Providence (R.I.) College in 2010 and the University of Illinois-Chicago in 2011.
He was in his early 40s and running basketball camps in Buffalo and Toronto in 2012.
“It was a not-for-profit business, but it’s 24/7,” he said. “There’s a lot of time put into it.”
It enabled his association with basketball to continue, but it was with future collegiate players instead of current ones.
He wasn’t the major bread-winner in the family and reluctantly began to accept the fact that he might need to seek full-time employment outside of the one arena where he longed to be located.
He feared that basketball would become a hobby, not a profession.
“I was ready to take on something to make money for the family,” Mennenga said. “If I were single, I might have just kept going and not thought too much of it.”
The opportunity that presented itself was selling cable television subscriptions door-to-door in Buffalo, N.Y.
His family had been supportive of his efforts to stay in the competitive Division I game and Mennenga saw a need to be more supportive — financially — of his family.
“I thank my wife (Shannetta) for holding it down for me,” he said.
The desire to help the family wasn’t all that he saw, however.
“When I’d look in the mirror,” Mennenga said, “I always saw a basketball coach.”
And yet, once removed from the Division I game, there’s a question about whether a return is even possible.
“When you’re trying to get back in, any time you’ve been out, it’s hard,” Mennenga said.
Fortunately for the 1987 News-Gazette All-Area shooting guard, one other person shared his same vision, Jim Baron.
Just in time for the 2012-13 collegiate season, Mennenga was offered a staff position by Baron at Canisius University, a school not only located in Buffalo, but one that was also just five minutes from the Mennenga residence.
Mennenga had no difficulty in walking away from the Time-Warner job offer.
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Canisius won 20 games the first year that Baron and Mennenga worked together and qualified for a low-level postseason tournament (CollegeInsider.com Tournament).
It was the break that Mennenga needed.
His coaching career has since skyrocketed.
He couldn’t be happier.
“I’m blessed,” Mennenga said. “I feel good providing for my family while doing what’s in my heart and that I love to do.”
For five years now he has been part of head coach Dana Altman’s University of Oregon basketball staff.
The Ducks reached the NCAA Elite Eight in 2016, the Final Four in 2017 and this week are preparing for a Sweet 16 encounter against Virginia at 9 p.m. on Thursday at Louisville.
Television cameras have showcased Mennenga on the sidelines at various times during the Ducks’ first two postseason games.
“On Game Day, we’re all on the same page,” he said. “There are no individual duties.
“It’s part coaching and part psychologist. It’s all about getting them to get and connect with the game-plan going in.”
Others are seeing what Mennenga has always felt — that he could be successful in big-time college basketball.
In 2016, ESPN ranked Mennenga as the seventh-best college basketball recruiter.
In 2018, he helped Oregon sign what was regarded as the No. 4 recruiting class nationally. 24/7 sports rated two Oregon assistants among the country’s elite recruiters that year.
Tony Stubblefield was ranked eighth and Mennenga was listed at 15th.
While the season has specific start and end dates, there are no breaks from recruiting.
“It’s non-stop, especially if you want to compete with the elite universities,” Mennenga said. “There’s never a dull moment.
“If you don’t have a passion for it, someone out there will beat you.”
Oregon has won 138 of 186 games (74.2 percent) since Mennenga joined Altman in August, 2014.
“We’ve won three Pac-12 titles and been to three Sweet 16s in the past five years,” Mennenga said.
“We utilize the past to help prepare for the future. We’re on the cusp of something.”
Only one segment of the team’s practice routine changes during the postseason.
“We keep the same rhythm and do what we do (in-season), lift, watch film and practice,” Mennenga said. “But we definitely practice shorter. We make sure there’s enough juice in the tank for game time.
“We’re sprinting down the homestretch now.”
Perhaps the best news of all for the veteran coach happened off the court.
After spending the first season at Oregon as a trial run — with his family remaining in New York — they have all been together in Eugene, Ore., the past four years.
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The Mennenga name has been prominent in Central Illinois athletics for decades.
Mike’s father, Marv, was an outstanding softball pitcher who was selected in 2007 to the Illinois Amateur Softball Association Hall of Fame.
Marv Mennenga also coached basketball, at St, Malachy in Rantoul and worked with Larry Butler and the Illinois Warriors AAU program.
Mike’s older brother, Deon, is the high school head coach at Armstrong-Potomac.
Beyond high school, Mike Mennenga played basketball for two years at Vincennes (Ind.) University and for two years at Morehead State, in Kentucky.
He then returned to Champaign County to launch the first steps of his basketball coaching dream.
Mike Mennenga was an assistant at Rantoul High school in 1993-94, followed by one year on staff at Parkland College in 1994-95.
During both of those years — as well as in 1995-96 — Mennenga organized and ran Super Sophs in Rantoul. It was a program for the top 42-rated sophomores in the state.
He then made the quantum leap from AAU coach in Illinois to the University of Maine as an assistant coach for the 1996-97 school year.
Mennenga helped turn a program that was 11-20 his first year into one that was 24-7 in his fourth — and final — year on staff.
He had a similar experience at the University of Buffalo. The team was 4-24 his first season (2000-01), but 23-10 in 2004-05.
At each subsequent stop, Mennenga has held a ‘salesman’ title as a recruiter.
Two of the five Oregon players who have started at least 20 games this season are 6-foot-9 forwards who graduated from Illinois high schools: senior Paul White, from Chicago Young, and freshman Francis Okoro, from Normal West.
Mennenga likes how Altman involves the coaching staff.
“He does an amazing job of making us feel like we have ownership of everything,” Mennenga said.
After 21 years and 665 games as a collegiate assistant coach, he can see a satisfying future at Oregon.
“Totally content,” he said. “Not looking (for a job elsewhere).
“We share the same vision as Coach Altman. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime.”
Though his parents are both deceased, there’s still reason for Mennenga and family — his wife of 22 years and daughters ages 15 and 13 — to return to Rantoul.
“My in-laws live in the house I grew up in,” Mike Mennenga said.
