KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Since Dennis Gates was introduced as the new University of Missouri men's basketball coach on March 22, he's been something of a perpetual motion machine. So when he paused to speak with the media at a Mizzou fan function at Chicken N Pickle in Overland Park, no wonder he needed to get his bearings when asked about his first month on the job.
"What day of the week is it?" he said.
Gates was smiling but not necessarily joking. After all, this was one of 16 such stops scheduled around the region and in Dallas and Chicago between April 12 and May 19 (and among around 25 overall stops) on Missouri's Come HOME Tour caravan.
Meanwhile, Gates also has had a staff to create and a culture to instill and a community to embrace and hearts and minds of disgruntled fans to begin trying to win over.
Oh, and a roster to mold while navigating the churning environment of collegiate sports entailed in the simultaneous emergence of transfer portal-mania and the untamed name, image and likeness frontier.
No problem for a man credited with helping put together four top-20 recruiting classes as a Florida State assistant coach and then reviving a damaged program at Cleveland State after taking over in the middle of a summer and inheriting a program that had three players, as he recalled it.
The blueprint?
"Step one is not to go to sleep," he said. "Step two is leave your ringer on. Step three is to make sure you have phone service."
He didn't call it step four, but part of the initial flurry was sifting out order from chaos and prioritizing how to spend his time. And that included one of the early calls being made to legendary Mizzou coach Norm Stewart to rekindle a relationship.
In the late 1990s, Stewart recruited the guard out of high school in Chicago only to have him land at the University of California at Berkeley what with MU then also being in the process of signing Keyon Dooling and Clarence Gilbert.
Never mind that it hadn't worked out for Gates to be guided then by Stewart. Better late than never: After they played phone tag one day and Stewart tried him back repeatedly, Gates said he figured the 87-year-old Stewart must have a reason to be so eager to connect.
"I said, 'Coach, you must want a job; are you itching right now?' " Gates said, laughing.
Stewart, he said, became the "only" person who has turned him down so far. But their early engagement was a nice small step for Gates ("I can't wait to see him and just continue to pick his brain," he said) and Stewart.
Speaking from his winter home in California, Stewart only laughed when asked if he intended to join Gates' staff in some way. Still, he clearly appreciated the outreach and had an impression of Gates' energy and sense of direction, a path Gates said has included contact with other former Mizzou coaches including Martin.
"Give Dennis credit," Stewart said. "He is very, very open. I mean, he is open. I hope he does well. I like his approach."
Later, Stewart noted some intermittent success since his 32-season MU career ended in 1999 but added, "I want to see somebody get this thing going again."
It's certainly too early to know if that will be Gates, 42, and how these crucial months establishing a foundation and creating his first recruiting class will resonate both in the upcoming season and the years ahead.
But it's also true that Gates thus far has been providing exactly what athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois believed the program needed when she made what was surely a heart-wrenching decision to buy out Cuonzo Martin.
Even as eight Tigers (currently) from last season's 12-21 team reside in the transfer portal, for instance, Gates has been constructing an intriguing roster. The group includes point guard Sean East, the junior college player of the year, point guard Nick Honor, who started 25 games for Clemson last season and forward Aidan Shaw.
The 6-foot-8 incoming freshman, who is ranked among the nation's top 75 prospects, had initially signed with MU but reopened his recruiting after Martin was fired.
"The second decision was his best decision," Gates said, smiling.
Albeit with no games to be played for months yet, that's made for an invigorating start for Gates, who has hired well-respected former Division I coaches Charlton Young as his associate head coach and Dickey Nutt as an assistant. He later added Kyle Smithpeters, East's head coach at John A. Logan Community College.
"You might have heard; he's been pretty good on the recruiting trail," Reed-Francois said. "He's done a wonderful job."
Most importantly, she added, he's engaging and connecting and "bringing people back into the Mizzou basketball family."
"Which is exactly what we need," she said.
So far so good even as we can only wonder how this will all translate on the court and in the years to come.
But all you can do is all you can do, too. And it sure seems that Gates is wired for this and understands the vital terrain of the portal and NIL and the need to capture the imagination of the Missouri fan ... not to mention the coach whose program more than a generation ago remains the standard.
