Arizona Wildcats walk-on Will Menaugh off to engineering career

The Wildcats’ walk-on center will start with Raytheon in August as a mechanical engineer.

A Catalina Foothills High School grad who already completed an internship with Raytheon and will graduate from UA in May, Menaugh said he would be doing design engineering for a defense system on boats.

“It’s, like a big turret basically, that will shoot down missiles toward boats,” Menaugh said. “It’s nice to get to work on something that can protect our armed forces.”

Menaugh said he worked a full-time internship last summer before getting the job offer, having decided in recent years he wouldn’t be pursuing basketball much longer.

“Probably not,” Menaugh said. “When I started college, it was a thought in my mind that maybe I’d be here for a couple years and then transfer to a smaller school, and try to go that route. But just the way things worked out in my personal life and in basketball, I took this course.”

A late blooming prospect who didn’t start playing until his freshman season of high school, Menaugh had improved enough to attract offers after his junior season of 2019-20, but couldn’t play that summer because COVID hit.

Instead, he accepted an offer in January 2021 to play for the Wildcats under Sean Miller starting in 2021-22. While Menaugh became the Arizona 5A Player of the Year in 2020-21, leading Catalina Foothills to its first state championship, Miller was fired in April 2021 and replaced with Tommy Lloyd.

That prompted a brief recruitment in which Lloyd essentially re-offered Menaugh a roster spot.

Neither side complained.

“The plan was for him to walk on with the former staff, and this is back in the Zoom era,” Lloyd said. We did a Zoom with him and his family and just swolidified that. Will’s come here and he’s crushed it academically.”

Menaugh’s 6-9 size and skills made him a valuable practice player for the Wildcats, who could mimic big men of upcoming opponents in scout team work and defend UA big men in workouts when Lloyd wanted to keep his entire rotation working together against another unit.

As such, Menaugh was a regular on the Widlcats’ practice roster and he even made the Wildcats’ August 2023 exhibition trip to Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

Sticking with UA just didn’t earn Menaugh a lot of playing time. Over four seasons with the Wildcats, Menaugh played a total of 33 minutes over 24 games.

The Raytheon job offer will keep Menaugh in Tucson, where he’s lived his entire life, the son of parents who attended UA.

All that is good, though Menaugh does have a wandering eye on checking out other places.

“I’ll be here for probably another year or two at least but I want to go explore some other parts of the country,” Menaugh said. “ I’ve been in Tucson my whole life. But love Tucson. I love being here. I’m not, not upset at all that I’m staying here.”