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Inside The Huskies

Sprinkle Hires Assistant, Completes UW Basketball Staff

Mike Mennenga comes to Montlake after a dozen seasons at Oregon.
Dan Raley|
Mike Mennenga comes to the UW after 12 years with Oregon basketball.
Mike Mennenga comes to the UW after 12 years with Oregon basketball. | Oregon

After nearly a total revamp of his University of Washington basketball staff, Danny Sprinkle filled out the coaching lineup on Thursday by hiring Mike Mennenga, who spent the previous dozen seasons at Oregon as a bench assistant.

Mennenga earlier was reported to be joining Creighton, where there's a new staff in place, but that move didn't materialize with no reason offered publicly.

The very serious looking Mennega is known for his ability to recruit internationally, a direction the Huskies embraced to a much greater degree this past winter by signing players from Australia, Brazil and Bosnia, and having a fourth Croatia unable to get into school.

In terms of assistant coaches, Sprinkle had four leave his staff during the offseason and he's added DeAndre Hanes, Charles Klask and Mennenga, plus a new general manager in Alex Kline and a newly created director for mindset and culture in Jayson Wells.

Andy Hill and Abdul Gaddy are the only returning UW assistant coaches.

Mike Mennenga will join Danny Sprinkle's UW basketball staff.
Mike Mennenga will join Danny Sprinkle's UW basketball staff. | Oregon

Mennenga, who played for Morehead State, began his basketball coaching career in 1996 at the University of Maine where he spent four seasons.

From there, he coached for five seasons at the University at Buffalo, followed by stops at Iowa State, Providence and Canisius.

Working with Dana Altman at Oregon, Mennenga shared in teams that earned seven NCAA Tournament bids, advancing to at least the second round each time. In 2017, Oregon reached the Final Four for the first time since 1939, and advanced to the Elite Eight in 2016 and the Sweet 16 in 2019 and 2021.

While him on the staff, Oregon signed eight 5-star prospects according to 247Sports, including Tyler Dorsey, Troy Brown Jr., Bol Bol, Louis King, N’Faly Dante, Nate Bittle, Kel’el Ware and Kwame Evans. The Ducks had signed just one such prospect prior to Mennenga’s arrival in Eugene.

Mennenga appeared headed to Creighton to join a staff headed up by Alan Huss, a long-time Bluejays assistant newly promoted to replace retiring coach Greg McDermott.

Connecting the dots, McDermott took over in 2010 as the Creighton coach and a replacement for Altman, once the latter left for Oregon after spending 16 seasons with the Bluejays.

Yet Mennenga now has been redirected to Montlake to join Sprinkle and game plan in beating Altman and the Ducks.

 

 

 

 

 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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