Director of Basketball Operations Chris Mongilia to depart men’s basketball staff after ten years

In 2023, the Tigers went on an improbable run to the Sweet 16, becoming just the fourth 15th seed to do so. 

Three years later, Head Coach Mitch Henderson ’98 is the last member of the coaching staff from that run left at Princeton.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Princetonian, Director of Basketball Operations Chris Mongilia announced that he will not be returning to the team next season and is quitting coaching altogether to pursue a startup company in the “youth sports and technology space focused on creating meaningful experiences and development opportunities for young kids and coaches.”

Last summer, Mongilia was one of two finalists for the head coaching job at a Division III program at The College of New Jersey. However, the job ultimately went to Evan Elberg.

“If I had gotten that job, my intention for getting that job would have been to be there for the rest of my career,” Mongilia said. “And then when it didn’t go my way …  I said to myself and to my wife, ‘What’s realistic for me?’”

Mongilia emphasized that his choice to leave was “strictly a family decision” and that climbing the coaching ladder would have likely required a move away from the Garden State, something that wasn’t a viable option for Mongilia. 

“I realized that I wasn’t interested in climbing that ladder and making this like a full-time commitment,” Mongilia said. “I knew that I was looking for something different in my life, and decided to start a new company, take a big swing, and try to create something for myself.”

A graduate of William Paterson University of New Jersey, Mongilia climbed up the ladder quickly after starting as a middle school basketball coach. In the 2014–15 season, Mongilia served as an assistant coach at DIII Kean University before moving to the director of basketball operations role at Division I St. Peter’s for the 2015–16 season. After just one season with the Peacocks, Mongilia found himself at Old Nassau. 

“In 2016, I came here for a job, and I found a home,” he said. “It’s really been the best and most transformational years of my life.” 

Mongilia credits the people in the department for making his time here special, highlighting a special connection with softball Head Coach Lisa Van Ackeren. 

While Mongilia was not directly involved with the team strategy, he played a key role in day-to-day operations, recruiting logistics, travel coordination, and video management for the program.

“Chris has been at the core of a decade of success for our program. His loyalty, attention to detail, and relentless work ethic helped drive a standard that translated directly to winning. More than anything, he’s a trusted colleague to many here in the department and a tremendous teammate,” Henderson wrote to the ‘Prince.’

“We’re incredibly grateful for everything he’s given, and I couldn’t be more excited to see him take this next step and build something of his own,” he continued. 

During his time at Princeton, Mongilia took on various projects, including developing and redesigning the new team room, the renovation of the video board in Jadwin Gymnasium, and, most famously, serving as the executive director and producer of Hard Cuts, a mini-documentary series inside the Princeton men’s basketball team that began ahead of the 2017–18 season. 

“We just want the alums and the prospective student athletes and their parents and fans to just understand a little bit about what it’s like to be a Princeton student athlete, particularly a basketball player,” Mongilia said of Hard Cuts. “And I’m excited to see what direction it goes in without me pulling the strings behind the scenes.”

The decade Mongilia spent at Princeton was arguably the most turbulent in the history of college basketball. The transfer portal, introduced by the NCAA in 2018, reshaped roster-building overnight, turning what had once been a slow, relationship-driven recruiting cycle into a year-round sprint. 

“I think college basketball as a whole and really the job of what we do has changed drastically since I was hired in 2016, and I think every year a coach’s job is to evolve in your recruiting, evolve in your coaching. Our recruiting technique has changed multiple times. Our focus has changed multiple times,” Mongilia said. 

The arrival of Name, Image, and Likeness in 2021 accelerated that transformation further, bringing financial stakes into a game that had long operated on the pretense of amateurism. Programs that once built identities over years now faced the prospect of losing key contributors to better-resourced conferences in a matter of days. 

“The student athlete that chooses to come to Princeton hasn’t changed, and the players that we get to coach daily are the same players that I coached in 2016 that I’m saying goodbye to in 2026,” Mongilia said, emphasizing that his decision has nothing to do with the “changing landscape of college basketball.”

The Tigers were hit by this changing landscape, too, as Henderson’s squad lost former standout Xaivian Lee to the portal, and Caden Pierce ’26 took the year off to preserve his eligibility. As a result, the 2025–26 roster had no seniors, with the team finishing 5–9 in Ivy League play and failing to qualify for the Ivy League tournament. 

“Mong was super influential in the Princeton program, from what he did on the court, to his relationship with the players, to everything he did behind the scenes,” junior captain and guard Jackson Hicke wrote. “We will miss him a lot next year, and we all appreciate everything he’s done for the Princeton basketball program.”

Henderson will now look to fill two vacancies in his staff: Mongilia’s role and the assistant coach position vacated by Mathew Johnson, who left his role after just one season to be on the bench at Boston College under new head coach Luke Murray. 

Hayk Yengibaryan is a senior Sports writer for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Glendale, Calif. He can be reached at hy5161[at]princeton.edu.

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

Correction: A previous version of the photo caption of this piece incorrectly misspelled Mongilia’s name. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error.