51șÚÁÏ

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Dennis Gates brought a stat sheet to the interview, though he’d rather not use it.

Seated around his office’s coffee table that perfectly holds a full basketball court whiteboard, the second-year Missouri men’s basketball coach talked with the Post-Dispatch about his team’s 7-4 start, how his depth players are settling in and how he wishes better basketball stats would become more popular.

Ahead of Mizzou’s upcoming Braggin’ Rights showdown with No. 13 Illinois at 8 p.m. Friday inside Enterprise Center, check out Gates’ thoughts on the state of his program and college basketball. Some responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Post-Dispatch: I want to start with Braggin’ Rights, Missouri-Illinois. What does this game mean to you, having this be an annual fixture?

Dennis Gates: It’s a beautiful basketball rivalry — one of college basketball’s best, I truly believe. Just the history of it, it speaks volumes, and it does not get the credit that it deserves. When you look around the country at what people think are “real rivals,” when you look back at even what Tyler Hansbrough (who was born in Columbia) said one time regarding the Duke and North Carolina matchup: “Nah, this ain’t a rivalry. Illinois versus Mizzou is a rivalry.” Those things, I think, really resonate.

It’s one thing for me to sell it or Illinois’ side to sell it, but when you have people come back right before Christmas from every generation or even institution and it be a fixtured game that’s in 51șÚÁÏ every year. It’s an unbelievable atmosphere, and last year was the epitome of it. It was a big-time snowstorm, airport shut down, city shut down, streets shut down. That game was still sold out, and people got there in a safe way. So that matters: Both Illinois and Mizzou fans got there through a snowstorm.

P-D: You’ve been part of different rivalries, including some of those Atlantic Coast Conference ones. How much does a rivalry change when it’s in a place that’s central to both teams, like 51șÚÁÏ, versus rivalries that may alternate between home and away?

Gates: When you look at it being on the same date, or the same area of the date, I think that allows people to put it in permanent marker on their calendar. The location speaks for itself, downtown 51șÚÁÏ, still some ways away from the venue for us but still across the border for those guys. It just makes sense for it to be there. ... You don’t need a promoter to promote it because it’s such a fixture.

P-D: You’re 7-4 going into Braggin’ Rights this year after being 9-1 last year, but it’s been a very different series of 11 games leading up to it. How do you evaluate where your team stands?

Gates: We just look at one game at a time. You have to understand, there’s different things that go into every season. There’s many things that can disrupt your season or disrupt your flow. We’ve had some tough games. Again, I tell everybody, they’re finding out how good Memphis is. They just obliterated Virginia by 23 points. I’ve tried to tell people this team that we were facing was a ranked team. They wasn’t ranked when we played them. But I guarantee that they were going to be an NCAA (Tournament) team and one of Penny Hardaway’s best teams he’s put together in his entire tenure. You look at Kansas, you look at Seton Hall, you look at Jackson State, those teams are some good teams.

Last year, we were able to build slowly and then throw our guys into sort of a forging situation, and we were able to grow in momentum. But we didn’t have disruption. We didn’t have injuries. We didn’t have anything that stopped our starting five and our next couple of subs, it never stopped us from building momentum. This year, we’ve been dealt a different set of cards. And that’s OK; it’s part of it.

P-D: What have you learned about this year’s team navigating those disruptions?

Gates: This team competes. That’s what I love the most about it. We got some resolve. We compete. They don’t know what they don’t know, as it relates to the coaching aspect and what I look at, but they know the things that they need to do and being able to fill the gaps. Sean East’s growth, Nick Honor’s growth, Noah Carter, everybody’s a year older. Not having Caleb Grill, not having Kaleb Brown, who I’ve mentioned as one of our best players, most improved players over the summer, that’s important for us to know that we hadn’t had the consistency — even John Tonje — hadn’t had the consistency as they guys have worked through knickknacks here and there and surgeries and whatever it is that medically they’ve had to endure. It’s just hardship. You can’t calculate it. You just got to be able to work through it, and that’s what we’re doing.

P-D: You’d mentioned those three — East, Honor and Carter — going into the season as the anchors of the starting lineup, and they’ve been playing the biggest workload. What have you seen from that group specifically?

Gates: They’ve been our most consistent guys. Starting with Noah Carter, shooting percentage-wise, Noah is only at 30% (from 3). But he’s been between 33% and 36% 3-point shooting. He’s rebounding more than he has last season and playing more minutes than he’s had. He’s steadily increasing his load as well but also production. I’m waiting for him to have his breakout game of the season.

Nick Honor’s the same way. Nick has been consistent for us. Nick has been great, averaging 12, 13 points a game, shooting 44% from 3, 83% from the free throw line. I wish he could go and shoot more free throws because that’s where some of his points are coming when he’s had his great games.

And Sean East, I mean, think about the most improved player, probably, in our league when you look at his production last year to what he’s doing in these first 11 games. He’s been tremendous and shooting the ball at 60% from 3, his assist-to-turnover ratio is in the positive, which is great for Sean and Nick. But those three are anchors. Where the consistency has to come in is our other guys. They hadn’t been consistent by way of injuries, so that you can have the familiarity of a rotation. We just haven’t had it, and it’s OK.

P-D: As far as that process goes, Tamar Bates and Aidan Shaw as the combination with those three has been effective. What about those two plugging in works so well?

Gates: I think their energy, their ability to play without the ball and make plays, their defensive tenacity and different things like that. I think they’re wiry, high-IQ guys. Tamar Bates, coming from Indiana, playing in the Big Ten, there’s not a venue he hadn’t been playing in that hadn’t been sold out. Indiana basketball, that’s one of the blue bloods of college basketball, and he’s been able to play in that environment and now take it and bring it here to Mizzou. His experience is great. The last game he played was tremendous. He’s averaging about 18 minutes — those numbers will go up because of Caleb Grill’s absence. And that’s where we got to understand he comes in. When you think of the disruption of our season, Connor Vanover, who would have been a starter at the beginning of the season, it’s been a disruption because he had the NCAA’s response to him putting his name into the Portsmouth (Tournament). ... Those have been the things that’s disrupted us, but Aidan Shaw and Tamar Bates have been tremendous in what I’ve asked.

P-D: With the center position, it seems like there are so many different routes you can go because none of your players are the same player from a skillset standpoint. Does your style have to change at all when you switch up who’s at center?

Gates: The best thing is our style doesn’t have to change, but the scouting report changes for the opponents because all those players that you just mentioned are different. So therefore, our adjustment, when we sub in guys, players and teams have to be aware and sometimes it causes a disruption because we have guys that can shoot the 3, we have guys that can stretch the floor, we have athleticism, we have length and size, we have different ball skills.

We have a guy like Jesus (Carralero Martin), who can dribble, pass and shoot, compared to Jordan Butler, who is a guy that is 7-foot who can catch and shoot. Connor Vanover, who’s a shot-blocking threat but also a rim-rolling threat, as well as a pick-and-pop guy. You have Noah Carter, who is an undersized guy who can play that same position, as he’s done last season. And Aidan Shaw can play above the rim vertically. So you have a number of guys, including Mabor Majak, who cause a different type of scheme from an opponent standpoint because they got to change up based off personnel. But for us, we do what we do.

P-D: How much do you feel like you’re starting to get a grasp on what buttons you can press with putting those guys in the game to change what the scouting report is?

Gates: That’s been already taking place. I enjoy, even last season, when you could put different guys in different spots and allow a competitive advantage, and the same thing applies. So for me as a coach, you learn that in the summer. You’re able to put people in different spots, and you have to continue to do that and move guys around as they’re playing well, which is the biggest difference. We have to see when guys are playing well and then make those adjustments. We can’t forecast another guy that’s stepping up and then have a great game. I can’t forecast that. The game presents it, and now we have to go with the hot hand.

P-D: How hard is it to learn that coaching trait?

Gates: It’s a coaching instinct. It’s not learning a trait. It’s watching the game. Everybody can see if a guy makes shots, right? Or if a guy is playing well defensively. But some look from the fans’ perspective. And being the coaching perspective and strategy is a little bit different. You got to choose the lesser of the evils and sometimes you got to wait on guys and be a little bit more patient, which is understandable, and give a little bit more grace. It’s unfortunate that starters and guys that’s in a starting lineup, they have more grace and minutes than guys coming off the bench. Those guys have to click in a lot faster and just dive in, versus test the water and see what the flow of the game is. Their flow of the game is watching it from the sidelines on the bench.

P-D: I was seeing some numbers that some of the transition looks are down a little bit this year from what they were last year—

Gates: Give me the specifics. I have a lot of analytics, and I don’t want to confuse them.

(The Post-Dispatch, feeling embarrassed without having written down any stats for the interview, changes tack.)

P-D: My working theory — and maybe this is wrong — is that because you all have been getting more blocks and stops at the rim versus the perimeter stops and steals of last year, some possessions are just starting physically farther back on the floor.

Gates: I see what you’re saying. You’re basically talking about line of scrimmage and when a possession changes. Yes, when you have steals happening at half-court, you have more points in the paint and more free layups, versus a block that is 94 feet away and you got 94 feet to go. That is a different analytic, and I do understand what you’re saying. And it also impacts our free throws.

P-D: How so?

Gates: Our free-throw attempts are a lot lower because of that. Also, our points in the paint are lower because in-transition layups, that’s points in the paint. And we were getting some breakaway layups and some easier baskets from 3. But ultimately, I think our percentages, when you look at free-throw percentages, are still there. Our shooting percentage 
 we’re hovering around the same. Steals were a lot higher, I know that. Our assist-to-turnover ratio was a lot higher. Where our team now is a little bit different.

D’Moi Hodge couldn’t make plays off the dribble. But Sean East can. Nick Honor can. Tamar Bates can do a little bit more. You look at that, and you take away the catch-and-shoot that D’Moi had and the assists that someone else had and you turn it into just the isolated baskets — those stats and analytics change.

P-D: On another stat — rebounding. Grill was doing well as a rebounder from the guard spot. Is replacing that on a specific player or more of a scheme?

Gates: It’s by committee. You have to rebound by committee. When you look at teams in college, a guy that averages 10 rebounds is hard to come by. That’s not a normal, consistent stat, but there’s some out there based off the level they’re in, etc. Even Kobe Brown wasn’t averaging 10 rebounds a game, and he was a great rebounder. You have to do it by committee, you have to be able to trace down loose balls.

But think about the offensive rebounds that are categorized as offensive rebounds for an opponent if we get a deflection and it goes out of bounds. That is categorized as offensive rebounds for an opponent, if we get a deflection and it goes out of bounds. You see what I’m saying? It’s about reading the stat sheet the right way sometimes and being able to understand, although we didn’t recover it, that’s not an offensive rebound. And that’s where the “team” offensive rebounds are on the stat sheet. When it says team, that means the ball went out of bounds on us sometimes and therefore they get an extra possession.

So you have to be able to return those stats, with turnover ratio and margins, and I think we’ve been doing that successfully. You have to be able to get those stats back. It’s just like a team may shoot less free throw attempts or field goal attempts, but if you get fouled on a shot, it should be counting as a field goal attempt. But it doesn’t. And it kind of disrupts the matrix of how you think of a basketball game when you look at stats, so it’s kind of backwards. You’re looking perplexed.

P-D: I hadn’t really thought of that as having that much of an impact.

Gates: Oh, it impacts what you’re reading. So if you shot 50 field goals, and I shot 35 and 30 free throws, it’s equivalent in possessions, and sometimes we don’t look at that. ... I just think our stat sheet needs to evolve in college basketball to catch up with the growth of analytics in our game because our analytics’ depth, the number of statisticians, meaning people who are educated statistics-wise and care about analytics, there should be a different stat sheet that takes place. I’ll tell you who does a good job: HD Intelligence is who we use. I wish college basketball went away with the black-and-white at sheet and went with HD Intelligence because they have a state-of-the-art way of looking at things.

P-D: So for those of us who write and talk about these games—

Gates: Don’t look at the black-and-white stats. I wish HD Intelligence would be able to be accessible to all media writers because it would help you see the game a completely different way. And I think that would allow more intriguing articles to be written because you’ll see it in a totally different lens. It’s like watching a black-and-white movie versus watching in 3D. That’s what it’s like. It opens your mind to a different way, and that’s where the NBA is going. That’s where the NBA has gone. That’s where college is trending, and I’ve been going in that route ever since I worked in the NBA. I’m looking at this black-and-white stat sheet, which is the same stat sheet from 1950, right? Same categories. It has no application to the way the game is. From assists — I don’t think assists should be measured. I don’t think assistant should be measured.

P-D: Is that like pote

Gates: Yes. It’s me passing the ball in an assist — that’s an assist because it got a shot. It’s like shots assisted in soccer. They count those. And then they count attempts on goal. Not the actual goal, but those are analytics, and we have to catch up with basketball.

P-D: Soccer analytics have gotten good with , where they say if you take a shot from right here, this percentage of time you’re going to score. And now they have expected assists — all these models.

Gates: It’s the same with basketball. That’s what HDI does. It modernizes. How you just explained soccer, it modernized everything around the game. It’s just a little bit behind.

P-D: One last question on the analytics front, then: You’ve talked about players like Sean East having input in the offense and some of the plays. Are they looking at these numbers too?

Gates: We educate our guys. The longer they’re in the program, the more educated they are. Sean East is a second-year guy, been in our program, so he understands a lot more than he did last year. And he still learned a lot last year. Think about D’Moi Hodge, who was in the program, played for us at Cleveland State for two years and then obviously here, he knows more in that category. Kobe Brown was a sponge in it. And he just loved every part of it because it was a new way of looking. (DeAndre) Gholston loved it. Our guys love it now. Nick Honor loves it, Noah Carter loves it.

It’s different for freshmen coming from high school, but they’re starting to click and learn more about it and really look at the game from the perspective it needs to be looked at in terms of how to best think you’re successful, how to measure yourself. It’s not just on points. It’s not. You have to find the other parts that don’t show up in the older stat sheets. You educate your team on that. And we make up our own season stat sheet on the areas that we think are very important.