Dennis Gates explains telling fans to not rush floor vs. Alabama: 'We need that money to go to NIL'

In the closing seconds of Wednesday night’s 110-98 victory over No. 4 Alabama, Missouri head coach Dennis Gates stepped to the scorer’s table and grabbed the PA microphone with a message to the excited Tigers fans in attendance.

“Do not rush the court!” Gates said with 1.5 seconds left in regulation. “Please do not rush the court.”

After the game, the Missouri head coach explained his reasoning in the simplest of terms.

“We need that money to go to NIL,” Gates said during his postgame press conference. “We don’t need to be getting fined out there. But the safety and I hope that becomes a normal thing. When you are excited, which I credit our crowd being, I just didn’t want us to rush the court and get a fine. That’s kind of how I see it.”

Missouri has already been fined $250,000 this season after Tigers fans stormed the court following a stunning 76-67 upset of then-No. 1 Kansas on Dec. 8. A second court-storming would have incurred a $500,000 fine, which would have gone directly to Alabama.

Dennis Gates praises Missouri fans for energy vs. Alabama: ‘Ultimately they showed up’

Alabama pulled within six points in the final minute, but No. 15 Missouri responded with a 6-0 run in the final 44 seconds to seal the victory. It not only improved the Tigers to 20-6 overall and 9-4 in SEC play but also marked the program’s third win over an AP top-five-ranked team. So far this season, Mizzou has five ranked wins on its resume.

The atmosphere was electric, and Gates saw a crowd ready to celebrate on the court. He praised the Missouri fans’ energy throughout the game. In his postgame presser, Gates made it a point to challenge fans to have the same energy in the Tigers’ next home game Tuesday against South Carolina.

“Ultimately they showed up,” Gates said. “And I thank our crowd, I wasn’t trying to take any fun away from them, but I hope they’re ready for next week as well. I kind of want them to keep that energy up and obviously continue to do the things that they do to impact a game.”

Mark Mitchell had a huge night to lead the Missouri charge. He dropped 31 points, which was not only a team-high for the game, but also a new career-high. Caleb Grill also had a big night with 25 points, including 10 of 11 free throws. Mizzou took 47 foul shots as a team, shooting 66% from the charity stripe.

Mitchell pointed out the impact the crowd had, but also shared the Tigers’ mentality coming in. Alabama was one of the NCAA Tournament selection committee’s top four seeds in Saturday’s Top 16 seeds reveal prior to its loss to Auburn, but Missouri didn’t pay attention to rankings. The Tigers just wanted to get the win.

“You can see the camaraderie, man,” Mitchell said. “We came here to fight today. We knew they were going to be a good team, we know what we worked on, we knew we were going to fight and we were going to compete. We don’t care about rankings, none of that. We’re just gonna do what we do, man.”

On3’s Nick Schultz contributed to this report.