Dennis Gates on drawing fouls: ‘We’re f***ing terrible at it’

Following a five-point loss to Tennessee on Tuesday night, Missouri head men’s basketball Dennis Gates wasn’t visibly or audibly mad, not even raising his voice during his postgame press conference. But he sent a very clear message about fouling, or rather drawing fouls.

As Tennessee deployed a bigger lineup featuring the likes of Jonas Aidoo and Tobe Awaka in the second half, especially, Gates felt his team struggled to attack and draw fouls on the offensive end. He didn’t mince words when describing the shortcoming.

“But, again, the big picture of it all was our inability, we gotta do a better job drawing fouls. I think we suck at it. We’re f****** terrible. We’re terrible at drawing fouls and we’ve gotta do a better job,” Gates said.

After a brief silence was broken by a reporter asking another question, Gates doubled back on his remark.

“Can y’all write all that in there, right?” Gates said, seeing what the response would be. “Y’all can write that in there, right? Make sure you don’t bleep that out.”

While the word itself might not be presented in totality, the message Gates wanted to convey will surely live on in plenty of copy locally and afar.

All told, the free throw disparity between the two teams wasn’t particularly stark, with the Volunteers shooting 27 to the Tigers’ 21. Tennessee made 19, good for 70.4% while Missouri made 15, a 71.4% mark from the line.

And Gates applauded the Volunteers for finding a recipe that worked. If anything, the fact that Tennessee wasn’t tactically outfoxing his squad, just rolling with a lineup that his own players failed to adjust to, seemed to irk Gates a bit more.

“Well I think they had to put Tobe back in the game because of what he did in that first half,” Gates said. “He was the spark. I think he had eight points at that point, but he also had five rebounds. He was just picking up different loose balls around the area, dump offs, dunks. He didn’t do anything outside the lane, but he did do things inside of it. And Jonas did the same thing. They got some easy baskets.”

Getting up to leave the postgame presser after a little more than five minutes, Gates made it clear once again that he didn’t want his expletive to be cut out from postgame recaps or write ups.

“Make sure you guys don’t bleep that out, OK,” Gates said.