New Mizzou basketball staffers share why they followed Dennis Gates: 'A special guy'
Tre Gomillion’s transfer to Missouri was made official last week, with the reigning Horizon League defensive player of the year following coach Dennis Gates from Cleveland State.
Gomillion spoke highly of his coach, with whom he won a league title in 2020-21.
“Coach Gates has an unbelievable bond with his players outside the basketball court, which gives us the confidence as players to play to our potential,” Gomillion said in announcing the move.
Gomillion was not the only Cleveland Stater to make the move to Columbia with Gates.
Of the 11 members of Missouri’s coaching staff, six followed from the Vikings.
The Cleveland State contingent fills all levels of the staff, from assistant coach Dickey Nutt to scouting coordinator Dalon King. Those who made the move had nothing but praise for their boss.
"He’s a great human being and a great person,” King said. “... It makes it easy to want to work for him, easy to want to go to war for coach."
Gates has consistently repeated his eight core values for the program — “friendship, love, accountability, trust, discipline, unselfishness, enthusiasm and toughness” — as if he’s recruiting anyone who will listen.
According to those who spent time with him in Cleveland, Gates walked his talk, embodying the values himself.
More: Kwiecinski: The most impressive part of Dennis Gates' first month leading Mizzou basketball
Matt Cline, who will work as Gates’ chief of staff at Missouri, served as a special assistant to the head coach at Cleveland State last season. Cline offered up three qualities of Gates that he said made him easy to follow, noting his ability to build relationships with players and the way he lets staff members do their jobs without micromanaging.
“Lastly, I think he has tremendous emotional control,” Cline said. “I think he never gets rattled. Never gets too high, he never gets too low. You see that through the success (Cleveland State) had a couple years ago during the pandemic.”
When Gates took over the Vikings program in 2019, the team won only 10 games the previous year under coach Dennis Felton.
The next year was another rough one for Cleveland State, which improved by a single victory in 2019-20.
In 2020-21, the Vikings stormed the Horizon League, starting 9-0 in-conference, winning both the regular-season and tournament titles, and making an appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
On the bench with Gates for the success was assistant coach Ryan Sharbaugh, who moved to Missouri with Gates to become a special assistant.
Sharbaugh said he believed in Gates’ plan to rebuild the Tigers, and his familiarity with his boss was what made him want to join the head coach in Columbia.
More: Dennis Gates finishes building Missouri basketball staff with 'crazy' chemistry
“I met coach Gates about eight years ago and he’s a tremendous mentor,” Sharbaugh said. “To me, my wife and my boys. It’s very much beyond basketball, he’s helped guide my career.”
King, Cline and Sharbaugh are joined in the move from Cleveland State to Missouri by Nutt, director of basketball operations Chase Goldstein and player development coordinator Perin Foote all coming along as well.
Nutt will move into the same position he previously held with the Vikings, using his 19 years of head coaching experience to help Gates.
“I watched him put together a program,” Nutt said of his time at Cleveland State. “I watched him lay the foundation. Keep in mind, he could have stayed at Florida State (as an assistant) and been just very comfortable, making a lot of money, in a comfort zone, in the ACC. But he just jumped into the water of sharks and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to be a head coach,’ and took over a program that wasn’t doing very well.
“... You’re in for a treat. He’s a special guy.”
Matt Stahl is the Missouri athletics beat reporter for the Columbia Daily Tribune. Follow him on Twitter @mattstahl97.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Missouri basketball staffers explain why they followed Dennis Gates
