Story Courtesy: Chase Messer, McKendree Assistant Director of Sports Information
McKendree Head Basketball Coach George Suggs officially announced the acquisition of well-renowned Randy Baruth as the program’s assistant coach on Friday, June 13th.
Suggs could not be more ecstatic about what Baruth brings to the table:
“We are thrilled to welcome Randy as a part of our staff. His values align perfectly with those of our players, coaches, and the entire McKendree community. He has a wealth of experience that will add immediate value as we continue to set high standards for our program. We cannot wait to welcome Randy and his family to Lebanon.”
Baruth has been at a handful of positions across several collegiate basketball programs, as most recently being the head man for Saginaw Valley State University for the past 13 years, totaling 183 wins. There, he has coached an abundance of 34 Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (GLIAC) All-Conference selections, which notably includes eight such players making the All-Defensive Team and a major award winner in C.J. Turnage, who received Freshman of the Year.
The 2015-16 season was one of his best as head coach of the Cardinals, posting a 25-8 overall record with an 18-4 mark in conference play. He earned himself the GLIAC Coach of the Year honor and captured the GLIAC regular season title. Although faltering early in the conference postseason tournament, SVSU made waves in the NCAA Tournament and won their Regional, which gave the program an appearance in the NCAA Division II Elite Eight.
Other notable team accomplishments in Baruth’s time at SVSU include clinching the GLIAC South Division in 2021-22, giving the program its first-ever victory over an NCAA Division I member in Western Michigan University on November 22nd, 2021, and ranking as the number one team in the nation on December 6th, 2022 per the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) Poll archives. His Cardinal team appeared in the NABC Coaches Poll on 15 occasions and in the Division II College Sports Communicators (D2CSC) Media Poll the same number of times.
Baruth shared his gratitude for this opportunity:
“My family and I are very humbled and excited to be a part of Coach Suggs’ program. He is a proven player as an All-GLVC performer at Bellarmine University, and now showing he is becoming an accomplished head coach at McKendree University. We look forward to adding every bit of experience we have to help him continue to build on McKendree’s rich history.”
Prior to SVSU, Baruth held various positions at different institutions to build the extraordinary résumé he currently has. He started out as a graduate assistant with North Dakota State University in August of 2002 while they were in their final two years as an NCAA Division II member (now Division I). From there, he landed his first full-time coaching placement at Northern State University in April of 2004 as the head assistant coach under basketball icon Don Meyer and was with the Wolves until 2009.
From Northern State, Baruth joined the Division I ranks temporarily with a director of basketball operations (DOBO) role at Colorado State University in Fort Collins for two years, and then spent a year at the University of Utah as their director of player development in their inaugural season in the Pac-10 Conference.
In his past nine years with SVSU, Baruth coached a total of nine former Cardinal players who now play professionally across the globe. He was prominent in making sure all his players graduated with sufficient grades in the classroom.
Over time, he has made recruitment connections and relationships with coaches and circuit directors in over a dozen states nationwide, as well as some of the hotbed countries overseas for international talent.
Baruth went to Alpena High School in South Dakota, where he played the sport for all four years from 1992-1996 and was a finalist for South Dakota Mr. Basketball in his last season. He remained local throughout his collegiate career as he spent his first year at Mount Marty College (now Mount Marty University) during the 1996-97 season and subsequently transferred to Dakota Wesleyan University for the remainder of his basketball playing career from 1997-2000.
Baruth earned his Bachelor’s of Elementary Education from Dakota Wesleyan University in 2000 and later received his Master’s of Education Leadership from North Dakota State University in 2004. He and his wife, Meghan, have been married since August 2006 and have three sons, Bennett, Camden, and Calvin.
