8:36 pm ET
Pete ThamelESPN
Cleveland State Coach Dennis Gates is expected to be Missouri’s next men’s basketball coach, sources told ESPN on Saturday.
The hiring is pending approval from the University of Missouri Board of Curators, which will have to call a meeting to approve Gates’ contract. As of Saturday evening, there was no public notice of the meeting, making it possible in the coming days.
Power Mizzou and St. Louis Post-Dispatch released details of a possible board meeting for the first time.
Gates has won back-to-back Horizon League regular-season titles at Cleveland State and led his team to the NCAA Tournament in 2021. He spent eight seasons under Leonard Hamilton at Florida State, where he established himself as one of the nation’s top assistants. trainers.
In Gates’ three seasons with Cleveland State, he went 50-40 overall and 38-21 in league play.
His experience at Florida State and three successful seasons at Cleveland State have made Gates one of the most in-demand coaches in the current coaching carousel, as he has attracted interest from Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, LSU and most of the open positions at major conferences. .
Gates, 42, will replace Kuonzo Martin, who went 78-77 in five seasons in Missouri. He became the first major employee in a lucrative sport for the first year of athletic director Desiree Reade-Francois, who came to Missouri in August.
Gates is taking on a proud program that has fallen out of favor in recent years as the school hasn’t won a game in the NCAA Tournament since 2010. Three consecutive Missouri coaches—Frank Haight, Kim Anderson, and Martin—failed to win the NCAA. tournament game. The school has never made it to the Final Four.
Gates graduated from the University of California and was a solid player there. He started 34 games and was a three-time captain. He is a native of Chicago and starred at the Whitney Young School before heading west for college.
His career included a role as a skills development coach with the Los Angeles Clippers and then as an assistant coach with Marquette, California, Northern Illinois, and Nevada before joining Hamilton’s team.
In the state of Florida, Gates’ reputation grew in part due to his success as a recruiter. He helped bring in future NBA lottery player Jonathan Isaac and high-profile recruits such as Duane Bacon, M.J. Walker and Terence Mann. He became a key staff cog when Hamilton turned Florida State into an annual NCAA tournament team and ACC title contender.
At Cleveland State, Gates took over from Dennis Felton on July 26, 2019, unusually late in the training cycle for the transition. Felton left a wheezy program that lost eight games in a row to open his final season in 2018-19.
Gates immediately injected a dose of adrenaline into the program, quickly updating the line-up and changing the trajectory of the program.
Cleveland State won 16-4 in the Horizon League in the 2020-21 season and took first place in the conference tournament. Gates’ team did the same this season, winning the championship and finishing with a 15-6 conference record.
Gates’ wife, Jocelyn, is a senior deputy athletic director at Ohio State.