The Kansas City Roos are standing at a crossroads, and they know it. The 2025-26 season was the worst in program history — a 4-27 record, 1-15 in the Summit League, the kind of year that empties an arena and tests everyone’s resolve. On January 12, 2026, fourth-year head coach Marvin Menzies announced his intention to retire at season’s end. Three weeks later, Kansas City announced the hire that changes everything: Mark Turgeon, the former Maryland, Texas A&M, and Wichita State head coach, takes over the Roos after the season. A program that just lived through its darkest winter is handing the keys to a coach who has won 476 games and been to eight NCAA tournaments. That’s not a rebuild. That’s a relaunch.
To understand where the Roos are, you have to understand where they’ve been. This is a program that has never quite found its footing in the modern era. As UMKC — the University of Missouri-Kansas City Kangaroos — the program bounced between the Summit League and the WAC, never winning a conference tournament, never dancing. The 2019 rebrand to “Kansas City Roos” was supposed to signal a new identity: the city’s Division I team, a program with a name as bold as its ambition. Under Billy Donlon, there were real flashes — a 19-12 season and a third-place Summit finish that felt like a corner being turned.
Menzies’ arrival was supposed to accelerate that. He came with a résumé that commanded respect: five NCAA tournament appearances in his final seven seasons at New Mexico State, where he developed a lanky Cameroonian forward named Pascal Siakam into an NBA All-Star; a stint at UNLV; years as an assistant under Rick Pitino at Louisville and at USC. He was the third-winningest coach in New Mexico State history and a former WAC Coach of the Year. Kansas City believed it was getting a proven program-builder who’d done it in the mid-major trenches before.
It never took. Menzies improved the Roos from year one to year two — a tie for second in the Summit in 2023-24 offered genuine hope — but the bottom fell out. A 13-20 campaign last year. Then this year’s catastrophe: 4-27, dead last in the Summit, ranked 337th on KenPom. The portal era chewed up the roster; Menzies himself acknowledged how hard the NIL-and-transfer landscape was to navigate at a program with Kansas City’s resources. When he announced his retirement in January, the fan reaction was telling: sadness, not anger. “Coach Menzies is a great guy,” the consensus went. “Wish it would’ve worked out better.”
The Turgeon hire is the boldest move in program history, full stop. This isn’t a rising assistant or a retread — it’s a coach with nearly 500 Division I wins, a Big Ten regular-season title at Maryland, an Elite Eight run at Wichita State, and a reputation as one of the game’s best talent evaluators. Turgeon doesn’t take the Kansas City job if he doesn’t see something: a major metro area with no other Division I program, a university investing in its profile, and a Summit League where the right coach can win immediately. The 2026-27 season will be his first chapter, and the expectation — stated or not — is that the Roos stop being the Summit’s afterthought.
The roster he inherits is young and unproven but not without pieces. The 2025-26 rebuild brought in 13 newcomers, a near-total roster flip that explains some of the growing pains. Jayson Petty, one of the two returners, led the team at 12.5 points per game and showed real shooting touch — a 17-point outing against McPherson on 5-of-6 from three announced him as a building block. Karmello Branch arrived from Santa Fe College as the FCSAA’s leading scorer at 21.4 points per game, a bucket-getter with four conference player-of-the-week awards. Trey Booker-Lowery was the No. 1 junior-college recruit in California after averaging 23.8 points and 9.4 rebounds at Lemoore College. Jerome Palm, the 6-foot-10 big man, led the Summit in rebounding at 7.8 per game and piled up double-doubles. The raw material is there; it needs a coach who can mold it.
The home matters too. The Swinney Recreation Center — 1,600 seats on the Volker campus — is one of the smallest buildings in Division I, which is both the program’s charm and its challenge. When it’s full and loud, it’s a genuine home-court edge. When it’s empty, the program’s ceiling feels very real. Turgeon’s arrival is, among other things, a bet that a bigger name and a winning product can fill those seats and make Kansas City care about its team the way it deserves to.
The Summit League context is everything. This is a league where programs get built fast — South Dakota State, North Dakota State, and Oral Roberts have all shown that the right coach, the right system, and two good recruiting classes can turn a program into a March regular. Kansas City has never won the Summit tournament. It has never been to the NCAA tournament as a Division I program. That’s the drought Turgeon was hired to end, and in a one-bid league, the path is brutally simple: get hot for three days in March.
So what defines the Roos right now? Honestly: the hinge moment. Behind them, the worst season in school history and a beloved coach’s farewell. Ahead of them, one of the most accomplished coaches available, a young roster with real scorers, and a league that rewards the bold. The Kansas City Roos have never danced. The Turgeon era begins with a simple, audacious goal: change that sentence forever.