Tolga Öngören

Tolga Öngören — Biography

Tolga Öngören has worked in Turkish basketball as a player, coach and executive. He won the Turkish championship with Tofaş, coached in the German Bundesliga, and he is now Tofaş's general manager.

He played for Şekerspor, Efes Pilsen and, for many years, Tofaş. After retiring as a player he spent a year as an assistant coach at Purdue University in the United States, then returned to become Jasmin Repeša's assistant at Tofaş, which won the league, the cup and the President's Cup in 1999. When Repeša resigned unexpectedly, the inexperienced Öngören took over as head coach; a squad that included David Rivers, Slaven Rimac and the young Mehmet Okur kept the titles. He was an assistant coach of the national team that took silver at EuroBasket 2001. At Fenerbahçe Ülkerspor he was head coach for a year and a half and won a cup in 2002-03, losing the league final in a seventh game to Efes Pilsen. After a brief spell at Türk Telekom he returned to Tofaş in 2005; the team was relegated after losing to Efes Pilsen on the last matchday of 2006-07.

In January 2008 he took over relegation-threatened Walter Tigers Tübingen and kept them up, parting ways at the end of the season because of financial difficulties. He coached EnBW Ludwigsburg in 2009-10. In 2011 he signed a five-year coaching contract with Trabzonspor. He later became Tofaş's general manager and has a say in the club's European campaigns.