COLUMBIA, Mo. — Missouri is prepared to hire Cleveland State’s Dennis Gates as its next men’s basketball coach, pending approval from the UM System Board of Curators, sources confirmed Saturday. The Board must give 24 hours notice before holding a closed executive meeting to approve the contract. As of noon Saturday, the Board had not issued that notice. Terms of a proposed deal are unclear. Gates is under contract at Cleveland State through 2027 with a salary of $550,000.
ESPN first reported Friday night that Missouri had targeted Gates for the job. On Saturday morning, a plane owned by longtime Mizzou donor Richard Miller was scheduled to leave his company’s headquarters in Pittsburg, Kansas, and fly to Cleveland then head to Columbia Regional Airport. But the plane never made it in the air, according to flight records.
Missouri athletics director Desiree Reed-Francois has not been available for comment since Mizzou fired Cuonzo Martin last Friday, following the Tigers' elimination from the SEC tournament.
Gates, 42, is 50-40 in three seasons at Cleveland State with two straight Horizon League regular-season championships and one NCAA Tournament appearance in 2021.
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The Chicago native played collegiately at California in the Pac-10 and has worked as an assistant all over the country, including stops at Marquette, Cal, Northern Illinois, Nevada and Florida State, where he spent eight seasons under longtime Seminoles coach Leonard Hamilton. At FSU, Gates helped sign seven top-100 prospects, including several NBA draft picks.
This year’s Cleveland State team finished 20-11 and 15-6 in the Horizon League to tie for the regular-season championship, but the Vikings lost to Wright State in the Horizon League conference tournament and had to settle for an NIT invitation. CSU lost to Xavier in the NIT first round on Tuesday.
Last year, CSU won the Horizon League tournament to earn an automatic berth in the NCAA Tournament, then lost to Houston in the first round. Cleveland State averaged 10 wins per year in the four seasons prior to Gates’ arrival and hadn’t finished with a winning conference record since 2015.
Four of Gates’ seasons at Florida State ended with NCAA Tournament appearances, including a first-round victory over Cuonzo Martin’s Missouri Tigers in 2018, on FSU’s way to the Elite Eight.
Gates’ Cleveland State staff includes assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Dru Joyce III, who was a high school teammate of LeBron James in Akron, Ohio, and is the son of Dru Joyce II, their coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary High.
Mizzou prepared to hire Cleveland State's Dennis Gates, pending Board approval - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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