Sports

Introducing Shantay Legans

UP’s new men’s basketball coach has high hopes

AFTER MOVING TO Portland this fall to resurrect the UP men’s basketball program, Shantay Legans and his wife Tatjana came to a quick realization about North Portland and the neighborhood blanketing The Bluff. They adored it and decided they had to live near campus.

There was just one problem: The cutthroat Portland housing market.

“Everyone was saying it was going to take six months, a year—maybe even two years—to find a house,” Legans, the Pilots’ first-year head coach, says. “But we went out and drove around to look at houses, and on the first day found a place. We made an offer, sold our old house, and everything was done in 48 hours. It was unbelievable.”

And, in hindsight, it was also an omen. Legans has only been on The Bluff for a few months, but already he has transformed the culture and trajectory of the men’s basketball program, instilling hope, energy, and positivity into a program in desperate need of all three. Along the way, while endearing himself to faculty and staff and impressing alumni and former players, Legans has very quickly become a part of the fabric of the community. Any lingering doubts about leaving Eastern Washington to rebuild the Pilots vanished the moment he set foot on campus. “This place is very, very special and I love being here,” he says. “It just feels like home.”

Legans doesn’t bring an NBA pedigree like former coach Terry Porter. Or a Pac-12 Conference coaching background like former coach Eric Reveno. But he does bring a winning reputation, recruiting chops, and successful head coaching experience, having led Eastern Washington to a 74-59 record, Big Sky conference and tournament championships, and a trip to the NCAA Tournament in four seasons. In 2020, Legans was ranked No. 11 on ESPN’s “40 Under 40” list of the top 40 college basketball coaches under the age of 40.

Legans is not a naturally patient man, but make no mistake, his patience will be tested like never before as he works his magic at UP. The Pilots have finished with a winning record just five times in the last quarter-century, including once in the last decade, and have not reached the NCAA Tournament since 1996. In the three seasons before Legans arrived, UP earned just one West Coast Conference victory.

But Legans is not one to shy away from a challenge. He grew up in Santa Barbara in a one-bedroom apartment with his mother, the late Susan Legans. While she worked to keep them out of housing shelters, he gravitated toward the game he loved to play—basketball—and the Boys & Girls Club in Santa Barbara practically became his second home. Legans was a short and scrawny kid, but what he lacked in size he made up for with oversized bravado and attitude. He was so competitive and possessed such a thirst to win, he talked trash constantly and started fights frequently. Legans was, in his own words, “a punk.”

But he also had talent, and by the time he reached high school, Legans had learned—with the help of youth

UP ATHLETICS

basketball coaches like his mentor Ray Lopes—to harness his fierce competitiveness for good. When he graduated from Dos Pueblos High School, Legans had matured into a respected leader who owned school records in scoring, assists, and steals, while earning a scholarship to play point guard at the University of California, Berkley. He led the Bears to two NCAA Tournament berths and went on to a brief professional playing career that included stops in the Netherlands and the International Basketball League.

Along the way, he decided he wanted to follow in Lopes’s footsteps and become a coach, which led him to remote Cheney, Washington, and an entry-level assistant job at Eastern Washington. It paid $16,000. But he worked tirelessly and prospered, and by 2017, Legans had ascended to head coach, eventually steering the school to unprecedented success. And he aspires for even more at UP, where he has brought an audacious ambition to a place that for years has languished in the cellar of the WCC.

“I want it to become the best program in the WCC,” Legans says of a conference that features perennial national power Gonzaga. “I know it’s possible because I used to live near where (Gonzaga) is located. Portland is a better city. The education here is amazing. The campus is beautiful. This is a great place. You have to have a vision, you have to believe in that vision, and you have to go after it. I want my guys, my staff, my players to have the same mindset. Gonzaga didn’t start out where it is now. It grew to where it is. And we can too. That’s what we’re pushing and striving for.”

It will take time, of course. But Legans already has over-

hauled the foundation of the program, and administrators say they’ve seen a cultural shift centered on hard work, accountability, trust, togetherness, and love. It starts at the top, as Legans spends long, late-night hours at that new North Portland home watching game film and compiling scouting reports. It’s not uncommon for an assistant coach or someone in the athletic department to receive a text message from him at 4 a.m.

On the court, the Pilots’ roster is a mix of transfers and freshmen, and the group has quickly grown into a big family. They make the five-minute walk from campus to Legans’s house multiple times a week for team dinners, sharing takeout or a homecooked Serbian meal from Tatjana, and they chase around the couple’s 5-year-old daughter, Zola, and 3-year-old son, Maksim.

It’s the promise of this family atmosphere that draws young athletes—and their parents—to the Pilots’ new coach. When Tyler Robertson was going through the Eastern Washington recruiting process in Australia in 2019, his grandfather was in the final stages of cancer. The two were close and Robertson was struggling. “Legs sent my grandfather a video message saying that he was going to take care of me and give me everything [he’s] got,” Robertson says. “That was a very big thing for me. I knew right then I wanted to play for him.” And, sure enough, Legans was a man of his word. Early in Robertson’s freshman year, one of his best friends committed suicide, delivering another dose of tragedy.

“But Legs was there with me to make sure I had everything I needed,” Robertson says. “He reached out every day to make sure I was all right, to ask if he needed to come over, to see if I needed groceries. That shows everything you need to know about why guys love him and love playing for him.” It’s no wonder Robertson—and two other Eastern Washington players—transferred to UP this year to stay with Legans.

Beyond the team, administrators and athletic department employees say Legans is night and day from his predecessors in community involvement and engagement. Before the start of school, Zola and Maksim tagged along with their father to the office every day. In the fall, Legans sat in the front row at every sporting event on The Bluff—from volleyball to men’s and women’s soccer—and asked that his players do the same. And he has so energized former players and alumni with his confidence and infectious personality, many have purchased season tickets as a show of solidarity and support.

For old season-ticket holders who were weighing whether to renew, it was not uncommon for Legans to reach out with a phone call or even hunt them down and invite them to his office 45 minutes before a game to try to persuade them to give him a chance.

“This is an unbelievably tight community,” Legans says. “And I want people to be proud of us. I tell everybody to come and be a part of what we’re building. We need them to believe in and support us through thick and thin. I always tell people: ‘If you want to check out a game, email me. I’ll get you a ticket. I’ll buy it myself.’ And I’m serious. Just email me. We want you here. Take a leap of faith with me.”

JOE FREEMAN ’99 writes sports features and enterprise stories for The Oregonian/OregonLive.