Cleveland State head coach Dennis Gates yells in the second half of an NCAA college basketball game against Oklahoma State, Monday, Dec. 13, 2021, in Stillwater, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
access point
After four months in Dennis Gates’ tenure as the new men’s basketball head coach at the University of Missouri, he seems to be passing all the tests.
he convinced Blue Valley High four-star recruit Aidan Shaw to recommit to Tigers. Additional Missouri State striker Isiah Mosley as one of six transfers. and then he landed a top 100 talent on four-star forward Trent Pierce as the first grand prize of MU’s 2023 recruiting class.
This shouldn’t be a big surprise. Gates was known for getting big recruits as an assistant coach to Leonard Hamilton at Florida State. He has set an equally high bar with the Tigers, arriving and offering many top recruits that Mizzou’s predecessor, Cuonzo Martin, might not have given a second glance.
However, offseason wins will mean nothing when the Tigers take the floor. Missouri fans who have experienced just two NCAA tournaments in the past nine years might not have much patience for Gates returning to March Madness, nor should they, considering the rapid turnaround he engineered at Cleveland State.
So what is Gates’s reputation as a trainer of X’s and O’s? Can he get his newly built list to work? An analysis of his 2019-22 seasons at Cleveland State offers some clues.
Find the right crime
When Gates took over Cleveland State in 2019, he faced a formidable challenge: The Vikings ranked 340th out of 358 teams in offensive rating the previous season, according to KenPom.
Gates was hired in late July, at the end of the offseason. However, he led Cleveland State to a slight improvement in his first year: The Vikings improved to 329 in the previous metric.
More troubling was the way his offense struggled. The shooting talent just wasn’t there. The Vikings ranked a dismal 347th in effective field goal percentage, 353rd in attempted 3-pointers.
All three failed led to, and coincided with, clogged paint and poor spacing. For Gates’ movement offense, which emphasizes off-the-ball movement and pick-and-rolls, opponents’ lack of respect for the three wasn’t exactly ideal.
Take two games against conference rival Youngstown State last January. In the first, Cleveland State beat the Penguins in overtime but shot just 5-for-22 from 3-point range.
In the rematch two weeks later, Youngstown State beat the Cleveland State shooters. On one play in particular, forward Torrey Patton passed up a wide-open 3-pointer in transition and had to convert a tough finish and one around a mob of defenders in the paint.
It’s hard to score that way. The Vikings missed their first six 3-point attempts and scored just nine points in the first 8 minutes, 43 seconds of the game.
At that point, Gates made a four-man substitution to put better shooters on the floor. The Vikings used up their next three 3-pointers not only making shots, but also getting better shots: The sets Cleveland State ran with that new staff on the court were much sharper with better shooters.
In one play, the Vikings’ opening set to make a double screen with a shooter without the ball in motion defended well, but then the defense fell a step back in the secondary action. When Cleveland State forward Chris Greene set up for a 3-pointer, the defender bit the feint and Greene calmly splashed the shot.
That may be the key to Gates’ offense at MU: In his three seasons at Cleveland State, the Vikings were never an average 3-point shooting team and always shot a below-average number of 3s. But they got to the free throw line and grabbed offensive rebounds at a higher-than-average rate.
By the time his stint in Cleveland ended, Gates had managed to raise the team’s offensive rating (from 329 to 206 in 2020-21 and to 167 in 2021-22) by getting higher-quality shots through more ball movement. The Vikings ranked 16th in assist rate last season; his creativity on offense and his greater comfort within the Gates system were evident.
Taking risks in defense
If one word describes Gates’ defense at Cleveland State, it’s aggressive.
The Vikings rarely allow an opposing point guard to dribble slowly down the floor. Even when Cleveland State got to a 2-3 zone, Gates often played a more aggressive tandem version.
Gates rarely had his big men sit in a coverage position against the pick-and-roll. Instead, Cleveland State would have the player defending the pick-and-roll switch, duplicate the ball handler, or move up to screen level to occupy the ball handler and then drop back, a smooth show-and-recover strategy.
That aggression often left the rest of the defense fighting, dealing with 4-on-3 situations or rotating to pick up an open man. The right personnel (Gates’ Florida State teams were known for their long, slender wings) forced a lot of turnovers in this scheme.
But the aggressive help defense also gave opponents some open stares from a distance. Cleveland State forced the most turnovers in the country last season, but also allowed the highest 3-point percentage in Gates’ three seasons with the Vikings.
It was feast or famine. In a November 2021 game against Ohio, Gates double-teamed the Bobcats’ second leading scorer, Ben Vander Plas. On one play, Vander Plas was able to shoot quickly and Ohio took advantage to open a 3-pointer.
On another play, Vander Plas’s pass off a double team was deflected for an easy transition opportunity.
Smart teams with point guards capable of exploiting Gates’ aggressive defense fared well against Cleveland State. The year before, Ohio had a record 40-0 streak against Cleveland State. And while that run might have been an outlier that said more about the Vikings’ offense than their defense, the same aggressive style was exploited when the Vikings played Houston in the NCAA Tournament that season.
The No. 2-seeded Cougars scored two quick buckets on pick-and-rolls, prompting Gates to switch to a zone.
Each of those plays featured errors from defenders: missing a rotation, over-rotating, or simply losing a one-on-one battle. In Gates’ aggressive scheme, opportunities to make mistakes are not uncommon.
Despite the flaws in the system, Gates’ defense was his calling card at Cleveland State. The offense showed more gradual improvement during his three seasons there, but the defense improved almost immediately.
Even last season, when the Vikings seemingly regressed in defensive efficiency, they were still the third-best team in the Horizon League. They had ranked second the previous season, so maybe the conference as a whole was just scoring more.
So what to expect in Mizzou?
Trying to figure out what the new Tigers team will be when the season starts in November might be impossible, considering the number of newcomers on the MU roster. But arguably the level of talent Gates will train at Columbia surpasses anything he had at Cleveland State.
Joe Nega of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer covered Gates and his teams as a reporter for the Cleveland State area. He told The Star that the “pursuing, relentless” defense Gates employed in Cleveland State could change in the Southeastern Conference. But the emphasis will remain on forcing turnovers with ball pressure.
Cleveland State’s guards recovered well on the offensive glass, Nega said. Tre Gomillion, who followed Gates from Cleveland State to Mizzou, ranked 72nd out of 603 players of similar size in offensive rebound rate, according to Bart Torvik, a ranking site similar to KenPom.
When it comes to the rest of MU’s offense, Nega said, it all depends on how well Gates’ new players fit into his system.
“It could be a year or two before he gets the guys he needs or is looking for to fit what he’s trying to do,” Nega said. “But once you have the right personnel in the right places, their offense is solid, really rudimentary.”
With the right players, and the transfer of Isiah Mosley, who scored 20.4 points per game for Missouri State, could definitely be one, Gates’ offense should eventually pick up. The veteran coach has shown that he can improve an offense, even if he inherits a team ranked 354th out of 358 in 3-point shooting percentage.