There were a lot of firsts on Monday night at Mizzou Arena. It was the first game (that counts) for Dennis Gates as the Tigers’ head coach and ended up as the first win, a 98-91 decision over Southern Indiana which, incidentally, was playing its first game as a Division One program. Of the 200 available minutes, 159 of them were played by players in their first game at Missouri.
Mizzou announced a crowd of 10,723 to watch the Tigers and the Screaming Eagles. While the actual number was something lower than that, the student section was full, the Antlers were in midseason taunting form and there was—as there has been for a few months—a nearly tangible plea from however many were here.
The Missouri fanbase wants good basketball. It is starving for good basketball.
There have been flashes. Cuonzo Martin’s team made the NCAA Tournament just two seasons ago, a year highlighted by a win over then-top ten Alabama. That season, of course, was the COVID season, in which just a few hundred fans were allowed inside arenas across the country, sitting close only to people they knew and not being able to share the joy and the contagious enthusiasm that comes with seeing a sporting event in person. Last year, the fans were allowed to come back, but a 12-21 season that was low-lighted by an 80-66 ambush from Kansas City in game No. 2 pretty much ensured that most of them wouldn’t come and those that did wouldn’t have much about which to get excited.
In reality, it’s been five years since Missouri basketball fans had the type of unbridled hope and enthusiasm they had at about 7:15 Monday night when the 2022-23 season tipped off after a temporary delay because some of the lights wouldn’t come back on after pregame warmups. In the 1824 days since Michael Porter Jr.’s two-minute debut in front of a raucous sellout crowd, there has been more yearning for the days of old than excitement for the present in this building. After Porter exited the lineup, the arena was never the same that season, even as the Tigers made their return to the NCAA Tournament after a four-year hiatus. And it certainly hasn't been since.
That tournament game was played at 9:50 p.m. on a Friday night at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The hopes of Tiger fans that night were dashed by a wildly athletic team that was about to embark on an Elite Eight run in which its play defied the No. 9 seed it had drawn. On the opposing bench that night for that Florida State team was Dennis Gates, an assistant to Seminoles' boss Leonard Hamilton.
Gates would spend one more year in Tallahassee before taking his first head coaching job at Cleveland State, a place people told him could kill his coaching career. Instead, he won 11 games in his first year with a roster he patched together in a couple weeks over the summer. He won 19 in his second season and took the Vikings to their first NCAA Tournament in 12 years. In year three, he won 20 and then got a call from Desiree Reed-Francois, who had been Missouri’s Director of Athletics for seven-and-a-half months and already needed a new basketball coach.
And thus on Monday night, Gates walked through the tunnel at Mizzou Arena for his first game as the head coach of the Tigers. Gates has been Missouri’s head coach for nearly eight months now. He has whipped Missouri’s fanbase into the fervor that comes with the excitement of the unknown and the tantalizing possibility that a program that once was great can be great again. He lured one of the nation’s top assistant coaches to sit beside him on the bench, attacked the transfer portal with urgency and topped it off by bringing one of the nation’s leading scorers the last two seasons back to his home town to play his final year or two of college basketball in the same town where he brought home a state championship as a high school senior. He has gotten Missouri fans back into basketball, albeit without coaching an actual game.
“I’ve been saying that for the past month or so,” senior Kobe Brown said when asked if there had been a noticeable anticipation around campus leading up to the opener. “It’s so different now, all the events we do on campus. We were over shooting hoops outside the student center, there’s just so much engagement we have with students and even just fans of adult age. There’s really a buzz going on in Columbia and I love it.”
Brown is the only Tiger who has played more than one season opener at Mizzou. This was his fourth. It was a game the Tigers were almost certainly never going to lose. Even with a 14-for-17 second half three-point barrage from a game Southern Indiana team, Mizzou’s lead never slipped below six points.
Nothing that happened on Monday night could possibly tell the fans in attendance that this is the year their thirst for winning basketball will be quenched. The season is in its infancy, the equivalent of the first half of the first NFL game of the season. That’s not nearly enough time to prove to fans that this season is going to be great, or even better than some of the last few. But at least their dreams weren’t crushed. Because that’s certainly happened on a handful of nondescript November nights in this building over the last decade.
The Tigers scored more points than they have in a regulation game since December 9, 2017. They also gave up more than they have in this building since January 16, 2016. But they won. The athletic director tossed ice cream to a rabid student section. Noah Carter nearly ripped down the rim with a dunk, inciting one of the night’s biggest cheers. Missouri won and Gates evoked, as he has done at every turn in the last eight months, the names of some of the greats of the past who made this one of college basketball’s top 20 programs or so for a good long stretch of time.
There was hope inside Mizzou Arena on Monday night. Whether it is warranted and how long it takes to be turned into something tangible will be determined over the weeks, months and years to come. But it was here on this night after a lot of nights being absent.
If nothing else, it’s a start. The first brick was laid. Now Dennis Gates embarks on the rest of the reconstruction.
Stay up to date on all the Mizzou news with your premium subscription
Talk about this story and more in The Tigers' Lair
Make sure you're caught up on all the Tiger news and headlines
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video and live streaming coverage
