Revisiting Gates path to MU

Posted on: March 23, 2025 at 09:10:08 CT

Prior to becoming MUs head coach, Gates spent 3 years at Cleveland State in the Horizon League. The Horizons tournament champion does get an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament but otherwise is about as far removed from big time college bb as possible.

What is notable about Gates Cleveland State teams is unlike similar programs that load their noncon with buy games and hit the road prior to conference play to be murdered by much larger programs, Gates never scheduled anyone of note in the noncon and mostly faced programs even smaller than his. So whereas the normal path of a low major coach getting hired at a big program is following a Cinderella NCAA performance where they knock off a big boy or based on several noncon upsets where they prove that despite less resources they can defeat larger programs, Gates went 3 seasons at Cleveland State with zero notable wins and extremely few matchups at all against big programs. It would be basically impossible to look through the 3 years of schedules and identify the top wins.

So his track record of success is based on relative to his Horizon league competition. After inheriting a terrible situation and having a rough first year, he then twice tied for the best record in the horizon regular season (once to Wright State and once to Purdue Fort Wayne). But winning the Horizon regular season means nothing, it all comes down to securing that automatic bid via conference tourney play.

His final season at Cleveland State they lost badly as the 1 seed 82-67 to Wright State, and then lost in the first round of the NIT to end their season. So a huge part of his resume was qualifying for NCAA tournament play in 2021 by winning the Horizon league tournament as a 2 seed. But what is lost to historical memory is the opening round game of that tournament against the Horizon league 11 seed was not decided at the end of regulation, or after the first overtime, or after the second overtime. Cleveland State won 108-104 in 3 overtime’s to advance to the second round before going on to capture the Horizon league tournament championship (4 future Tigers played on that team). After that they were easily handled by Houston in the 1st round of the NCAA tournament and ended their season. That triple overtime result playing out in his favor is arguably the most important factor to him eventually getting the MU job.

So it’s not a sufficient perspective to say Gates was hired by MU with only 3 years of coaching experience and that coming from the very low D1 level. It’s important context that during those 3 years he never defeated anyone from a major conference or a high mid major. He made one NIT and once NCAA tournament and lost in the first round both times in rather non competitive fashion. He came to MU having twice tied for the Horizon regular season title and once winning its postseason tournament after barely escaping a first round upset. That is it. There is not a single individual game result during those 3 seasons that demonstrated the ability to compete with programs at this level.

Now he is very highly thought of, connected, and respected among his peers. There is nothing that demonstrates he is in over his head or doesn’t have the capacity to grow into and succeed this job. But at the time we hired him it was an incredible reach and leap of faith for a program of our size that was admittedly in a terrible situation. That is almost unarguably true

Edited by FIJItiger at 09:13:19 on 03/23/25