Buzz Williams: Dennis Gates should be SEC Coach of the Year, skills are underrated

The Texas A&M Aggies survived a close game on the road against the Missouri Tigers, which head coach Buzz Williams knows his team needed a massive effort to win. A major part of that was because of just how well Missouri head coach Dennis Gates had approached the game.

One unique choice that Gates made in the game was stick with one lineup for the majority of the second half. After the game, Williams was asked about that choice and he ended up using that as a jumping off point to praise Gates and declare that he deserves to be Coach of the Year.

“It caused a lot of stress for us,” Buzz Williams said. “Coach Gates will be Coach of the Year, two out of his first three years in the SEC. You can probably research that as a sentence in your story. I don’t think that that’s ever happened. It for sure hasn’t happened, considering the adversity that they fought through last year with the injuries and all of those things.”

For Dennis Gates and Missouri, it’s been a remarkable turnaround from last season. After going 8-24 and 0-18 in SEC play for the 2023-24 season, the Tigers are now 17-6 overall and 6-4 in SEC play, which puts them seventh in the current conference standings, even with two straight close losses. That came after he went 25-10 in his first season with the program, making the jump from Cleveland State.

“I think he may be the most underrated head coach in the country, and I love Desiree [Reed-Francois]. You guys probably know a little history on that,” Williams said. “I absolutely have the most respect you can possibly have for Coach Gates, Coach C.Y. [Young], Coach [David] Nutt and his story.”

Going into halftime of their game, Texas A&M was up 38-29, holding the Missouri offense down. That was when Dennis Gates shook things up and the Tigers were nearly able to come back to win the game, coming up just three points short in a 67-64 battle.

“He’s very underrated as a tactician, and you can tell throughout his career, not only as a head coach, but as an assistant coach, he was preparing for opportunities in specials, and the things that they do in specials are as good as anybody in the country, and I love studying them in the summer so I can steal a lot of it,” Williams said. “But I can’t answer the question for Coach, but I have some thoughts on why he was doing it, and it forced us to do some different things, which is obviously, I think what he was probably anticipating.”

Texas A&M and Missouri aren’t scheduled to play one another again this season. However, there’s a good chance they good see one another in the SEC Tournament at some point.