Missouri coach Dennis Gates is the key to the Tigers going from a winless SEC season to the NCAA Tournament

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Dennis Gates wants you to know his grandmother picked cotton in the Deep South. To get away from such a life and carve out a new one, Alice Goins moved to Chicago and worked in a factory for five decades. 

“She was there every day, on time,” Missouri’s coach said proudly. 

Goins was part of the Great Migration. Six million African-Americans from about 1910-1970 left the Deep South for jobs in the West, Midwest and Northeast to improve their lot in life. 

Chicago is also where the Missouri coach grew up. When she got established there, Goins moved her daughter Shirley Dawson up North. Eventually, Dawson had Dennis Ray Gates II who became his grandma’s favorite, the one who taught him how to fish.

“Just to provide for the family,” Gates said.

So when the question of how Gates’ program rebounded from an 0-18 conference record last season to be one of the season’s most refreshing stories, there is a deep well to jump down. It’s not just recruiting or coaching, it goes beyond the players and coaches. 

It goes back. Way back. 

“Perspective says, ‘Just a factory worker?’ Gates said of Grandma Goins. “Try the other part of that. To her, she treated that job like I treat this one. She was as rich as she ever could have dreamt.” 

Perspective also says, eventually, basketball must be stirred into this story. Missouri won its 21st game Tuesday night with a 101-71 victory vs. South Carolina, a day after rising to No. 14 in the AP Top 25 poll. In the last 12 years the program has been ranked higher only once. 

The win was Mizzou’s 10th in the SEC, the runaway toughest conference in the country this season.

“Arguably the best conference in history,” one player mentioned in passing. 

While the Tigers are on their current run they’re allowed perspective too. Gates is in his third year at Missouri having directed one of one of the biggest year-to-year turnarounds in recent history. The net difference in records from last season is plus-15 games. 

Missouri’s last winless conference season was 1907-08, its first season in the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. That was seven years before World War I.

Gates has already admitted such a season-long zero marks a coach for firing. But, again — sitting in a conference room this week explaining Missouri’s success he comes back to a central question: How hard could all this hardwood resurrection really be? 

Again, that perspective.

“People handle stress differently. I’ve seen my grandmother and mom handle stress and pressure,” the coach said. “They didn’t blink.” 

Gates then launched into recollections of another mentor. Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton, 76, will step down at the end of the season after a 54-year career. He hired Gates as a graduate assistant in 2004. Gates then returned to the Seminoles as an assistant in 2011 and stayed until 2019.

It seemed like a lifetime because of the lessons learned.

“He integrated everything he’s been a part of,” Gates said of Hamilton. “He drank from a colored water fountain, sat in the back of the bus. Sat at the movie theater in the back. I saw how he handled all of it.”

Gates would peek out from behind a curtain to watch Hamilton’s press conferences. He would ask FSU SID Chuck Walsh for help doing mock media interviews “for the day it was going to be my time.”

He would attend the practices of Bobby Bowden, Jimbo Fisher and baseball coach Mike Martin, learning how to conduct himself. 

“My entire growth started,” Gates said. 

What the world largely doesn’t know about this story: Hamilton himself suffered through an 0-18 conference season at Miami in 1993-94, his third with the Hurricanes. No Miami player on that team averaged double figures. The Canes didn’t win after Jan. 4.

With Gates, Hamilton went in depth on his 0-18 league record more than being the first Black assistant in the SEC (at Kentucky) or becoming Florida State’s winningest coach. Gates was thankful he paid attention sitting to listen to Hamilton tell the story of his winless conference season “about 100 times”. 

“I had my 0-18 season and I was more prepared for that than any coach in the country,” Gates said, his voice rising. “I will put that against anybody. Can you handle an 0-18 season how I did?”

After enduring last season, Gates then had to survive that hoops trainwreck in a professional sense. The administration – including the former AD who hired him Desiree Reed-Francois – didn’t blink either. 

“A lot of people would have fired a staff,” Gates said. “A lot of people would have said [it was] the players but our players never gave up.”

Perhaps the best way to describe this turnaround is Gates’ demeanor. The man is a human flatline. Even, across the board. Almost monotone. It is more than a coincidence that Hamilton and Gates sport the same expressionless look during games. Hamilton is nearing 80 and looks 60. Gates is 45 and could pass for 30. 

In a basketball profession that sometimes features loud mouths, referee baiters, look-at-me camera hogs, Gates learned from one of the best in projecting competency. 

“A silent confidence,” he calls it. “My demeanor comes from what this generation of kids need.”

“Self-discovery” is part of what he calls his player/coach interaction. That’s why Gates preaches to his players to never react to officials’ calls.

“He doesn’t show emotions,” guard Caleb Grill said. “He could be on the sidelines jumping up and down and calling for fouls. His expectation is we don’t call for fouls or don’t look at officials. If he’s telling us not to [react] to officials and he’s reacting to officials that wouldn’t be who he is. The way he acts is the way we want to act on the court.” 

“I try not to interrupt their performance area,” Gates said. “It’s like if you go on Broadway you don’t hear the director or producer yell, ‘Cut!’ in the middle of the show.’ “

It shows in Missouri’s play. It made 11 3-pointers against hapless South Carolina (1-14 in the SEC), dealt out 21 assists and shot 63.5%. It was almost unfair to evaluate Missouri fully Tuesday against such an SEC doormat. Almost. A team that posted a bagel in conference play a year ago is now No. 9 in the KenPom.com rankings 

The Tigers can beat you with the inside flash of 6-foot-9 Duke transfer Mark Mitchell, the outside shooting of Grill and rebounding of 7-foot Josh Gray. But when the delicate balance is upset, it can lead to what happened Saturday night at Arkansas. 

Gray was out with an illness. Grill didn’t make a shot in the second half. Arkansas scored 30 points on 18 Missouri turnovers. After being up by seven at half, Mizzou was outscored 51-37 in the second half. 

That was three nights after the program’s biggest win in years. Mizzou scored its most points in a regulation conference win in 35 years in a 110-98 victory vs. then-No. 4 Alabama. Mitchell scored a career-high 31 points. Grill posted his first double-double of the season. 

In reflection of that low-key competency, Gates called a timeout with 1.5 seconds left to go to the scorer’s table. He implored the fans not to storm the court. They didn’t. 

In the postgame ESPN interview Gates donned a headset and gave proper credit before his players surrounded him, screaming. It was at that point Gates took off the headset and handed it to guard Tamar Bates, a captain. 

“Instead of swallowing them up with my own words, [I lead with] my disposition on the sidelines,” Gates said. “I make it almost invisible. That’s how I operate with my players. I want our mistakes to be so invisible that only I can see it.”

That decorum has been transferred to the players. After wins, the Tigers touch their index fingers to their lips in a gesture that has come to be known as “Hush No More.”

Mitchell translated. 

“We don’t do too much talking,” he said. “We let our play speak for itself.”

Last season Grill was injured for much of the season. A foot injury limited guard John Tonje to just eight games. Tonje is now at Wisconsin averaging a career-high 19.7 points. That explains some of the 0-18. 

What came out of it was more lasting. The lockerroom never came close to fracturing. 

“His even keel approach, his level-headedness and again the word I always come back to is poise – is what helped us to come out and compete last year,” Bates said. 

In transferring from a blueblood, Mitchell said, “I’m a Dookie until I die.”  He also saw a home at Missouri. In three seasons at Cleveland State, Gates had gone from 11-21 to back-to-back postseason appearances (NCAA and NIT). 

Something bigger is happening in CoMo. Against South Carolina, Mizzou Arena was near capacity again. At 18-1, the Tigers have the most home wins in the country. They have sold out six of their nine SEC home games counting the regular-season finale against Kentucky on March 8. 

When the 21-year-old building opened in 2004, it coincided with a basketball downturn. Mike Anderson brought things back for a while. But in the last decade the program has mostly withered. Fans stayed away. 

“I’m well aware,” said Bates, a Kansas City native whose father graduated from Mizzou. 

When Mizzou went to the SEC in 2012, it lost more history and tradition in both football and basketball. It can be argued it has taken this long to assimilate to a new league. 

Missouri has no real rival in the league, not on a level it did in the old Big Eight and Big 12 with Kansas, Iowa State, Kansas State, Nebraska and Oklahoma. It helps that OU is now in the SEC. The Tigers wiped the Sooners out by 24 on Feb. 12. Back on Dec. 8 Kansas was ranked No. 1, before Missouri took out the Jayhawks by nine in a nonconference game. 

“Everybody points back to the Kansas game,” Bates said. “That was a huge game for us … We knew who we were well before anybody else did. By the time the rest of the nation took notice we already had our confidence.”

For most of the rest of college basketball, February marks the dog days – just trying to slog through until March. The Tigers are definitely in the NCAA Tournament but their season is still being defined.

The day before the South Carolina game, Gates was proudly celebrating the seventh birthday of his son, Dennis Ray Gates III. He dialed up his mom – no answer – to expand for a reporter on the exploits of Grandma Goins. 

Gates’ Cal years had a role in this turnaround too. During his official visit to Berkeley, Gates asked coach Ben Braun if there was a rule against freshmen becoming captain. Gates had been told every step of his career from AAU through high school that he was a leader, perhaps a head coach someday. 

Gates didn’t become a captain that first year, but he was during the next three seasons. In that career he averaged 3.8 career points, pursued a master’s and graduated from prestigious Cal in only three years. 

“Ben Braun would say I wasn’t [a captain as a freshman], but I definitely was,” Gates said. “I had the respect of my seniors.”

He also mixed in time as a teaching assistant for professor/social activist Harry Edwards, and as a resident assistant – checking IDs from 6 p.m.-3 a.m. while doing homework. 

Outside of Gates’ office are several pictures of him posing with his biggest influencers – Hamilton, Braun, Kobe Bryant, the team’s sports psychologist Joe Carr. 

Bates has a little of Gates in him regarding the captaincy. Gates initially named Grill and veteran guard Jeremy Sanchez to be captains. A week before the season opener, Bates got added to the list.

“He obviously wanted to see me respond to the fact that he didn’t name me captain immediately,” Bates said. “I had areas I needed to improve in in terms of leadership. That helps me realize this team needed to be player-led. My voice needed to be heard on a consistent basis.”

Coincidentally, Bates is having a career year leading the team in free-throw percentage (.923) and shooting 41% from beyond the arc. He’d be the first Tiger to shoot at least 50%, 40% from 3-point range and 90% from the line. 

A year ago former Indiana assistant and website pundit Dan Dakich posted an incendiary tweet critical of Bates and that Mizzou had “no chance to win with him.” Dakich recently doubled down on his take despite Bates being a team captain for a top 15 team. In other words, Missouri absolutely is winning with him. 

Thank goodness Bates deleted Twitter from his phone at the beginning of his sophomore year. 

“It didn’t really give me any added motivation,” he said. “Somebody’s opinion, especially if it’s completely wrong, doesn’t really move me at all.”

Grill is at his fourth stop having started at Iowa State under Steve Prohm, migrating to UNLV, then back to Iowa State before landing at Missouri. Grill was available because he had been dismissed two years ago by Cyclones coach T.J. Otzelberger. 

In a social media post Grill said he hoped to one day share his departure story regarding his “mental health” and “mental illness” he had been battling all season.

“What happened, happened,” Grill told CBS Sports. “I’m at the best place I’ve been in my college career.” 

On Tuesday, Grill came off the bench to score 12 of his 22 points in a four-minute first-half stretch. 

In the end, what’s amazing is that Gates not only hung on to the incoming recruiting class but also kept the likes of Bates, Grill and Trent Pierce, a 6-10 forward who was the program’s highest-ranked recruit in eight years. 

“We’ve had plenty of conversations about what it was like,” said Mitchell, who left Duke after starting for two seasons. “Going 0-18 is pretty hard. You think you’d fall into one [win].”

Bates recalled a moment after the end of last season. An SEC Tournament loss to Georgia that ended that 8-24 season. 

“We left it in that lockerroom [saying] ‘Look, this chapter is over,’ he said. “People that are looking from the outside, that [winless season] is going to be the story.”

Not anymore if you’ve jumped down that well. These days the Tigers are taking control of their fate before our eyes. It’s the way a certain expert fisherman from Chicago with a stoic bearing wants it. 

“Some people get jobs because they’ve won a national championship,” Gates said. “Some programs run themselves.”