Kansas City Roos Return To Municipal Auditorium

The Kansas City Roos men's basketball team plays its first game at Municipal Auditorium on Nov. 6 at 7:30 p.m., hosting Southern Illinois. It is the program's first home game in the building in eight years.

The move comes after the school hired Mark Turgeon as head coach and signed a jersey patch sponsorship with JE Dunn, a first for the program. Municipal Auditorium, built in 1935, has hosted more NCAA Final Fours than any other venue. It staged the NCAA semifinal and championship nine times between 1940 and 1964.

Turgeon, a Topeka native who played point guard at Kansas from 1983 to 1987, said he walks recruits through the building to show them where Wilt Chamberlain played his national championship game. "Can you imagine how bad his feet hurt after the game?" Turgeon said.

His record over 24 seasons as a head coach stands at 476-265, with 10 NCAA Tournament appearances and four NIT appearances. He took Wichita State and Maryland to the Sweet Sixteen, led Wichita State to a 2006 Missouri Valley Conference title, and guided Maryland to the 2020 Big Ten regular-season championship. He also got Texas A&M to four straight NCAA Tournaments.

Turgeon said the vision that UMKC Chancellor Dr. C. Agrawal and athletics director Dr. Brandon Martin laid out for him convinced him to return to the Midwest. "I understand that it's a really tough job," he said. "We're 358th out of 364 (NCAA Division I teams). We've never done it." The Roos have never appeared in an NCAA Tournament.

Martin said the venue change reflects the program's direction. "When you have an elite coach like Coach Turgeon, you want to have the best presentation, you want to have the best opportunity and platform and venue to be able to recruit Kansas City," he said. Martin added that the program aims to become a top mid-major program ranked in the top 25, and pointed to work remaining in NIL, revenue sharing, recruiting, and infrastructure.

Municipal Auditorium has new scoreboards and new theater-style seats, Turgeon said. He has said he eventually wants an on-campus arena. Until then, the Roos' home floor sits in downtown Kansas City, where the building housed the NCAA championship game nine times from 1940 through 1964.