Everything Dennis Gates said Wednesday: 'I think too often we’re analytically frozen, instead of using instincts.'
Mizzou coach Dennis Gates met with media Wednesday as the Tigers prepare to face Alabama State. Missouri will try to break a two-game losing skid at 7 p.m. Thursday. Here is a full video and transcript of everything Gates said.
Opening statement
Gates: “I want to first thank, or congratulate our signees, Aidan Chronister, Toni Bryant and Jason Crowe Jr. and their families. Specifically, I want to congratulate Jason Crowe Jr. on a record-setting season that will go down in the history of California. High school scoring record, a great feat, a great accomplishment. And I just want that guy to know we’re proud of him. I want to thank our fans and you guys as the media for narrating what you narrate for so many people that are not at the games. I think you guys do a great job.
“The other thing is reflecting on our previous two games, Notre Dame and Kansas. These opportunities give us a lens to see where we need to grow. And as a head coach, I will continue to identify those areas that we need to grow so that we can have excellence. So that we can continue to improve. So that our players can continue to improve. I think when you face these teams on the road, it’s completely different than facing them on the game. Last season we had ACC/SEC Challenge here at home, and we had Kansas game here at home. This year, two road games.
“I think in the future, I want to try to offset that where one year we may have a ACC/SEC Challenge on the road. Hopefully Kansas game at home. You know, those are things that you look at to try to make sure you keep your team in a specific balance. The other thing is, you see the areas you improve in as well. You’re identifying where you have gotten better, and I think our team has gotten better. Younger guys are getting reps. It’s great to see Trent Burns and Nicholas Randall getting those reps.
“In addition to what November and December gives us, it gives us an opportunity to grow and get better and prepare us for an SEC run. And that’s where seeing the players individual process and progress is important. This team is not close to the ceiling. We are not close to maxing out how we can grow and where we can grow. I’m looking forward to, to that part as we continue our scheduling, continue playing our games. We got a tough two home stand against Alabama State and Bethune-Cookman. Alabama State specifically Tony Madlock does a great job. Coach (Dickey) Nutt gave him his first job when he was a high school coach going into the college ranks. He’s been an assistant, associate head coach and a recruitment coordinator at Memphis, at Auburn and different places. And behind a lot of success.
“So for me, playing against a NCAA tournament team, a team that has won an NCAA Tournament game last year, they’re going to come in with unbelievable fight, unbelievable game plan. They have great toughness, athleticism, they have great rebounding, their shooting ability and point of attack are all emphasis. And we have to be able to offset that. And then Sunday, obviously, we play Bethune-Cookman, led by Reggie Theus, and they took Auburn to that first game of the season to overtime. Should have won that game. So by any means, are we looking beyond our next opponent, but for the fans out there, we’re going to need them here in our arena to help cheer our team on and give us a great home court advantage.”
Question: With the free-throw point for you offense, I’m curious, is there kind of a defined benchmark you have for how you quantify what your free-throw attempt rate needs to be? Or the difference between you and an opponent? I’m curious just kind of what for you defines success or not being successful.
Gates: “Yeah, what’s successful is this, I want to shoot, I want to make more free throws than the opponent attempts. You see what I’m saying? That is, that is a benchmark. Shooting more, or making more than the opposite team attempts. That’s one. Two, I want to be able to lead the country and be one of the top teams in the country at that. I think having Ant Robinson, who needs to do a better job at getting to the foul line than years past, he has to improve his point of attack. He has to get to the line. Sebastian Mack has to get to the line, and Mark Mitchell has to continue to get to the line.
“Mark Mitchell is top three, top four guys in the country in free throw attempts. So I want to see the guys that we recruited, in addition to retained, maximize what they’ve maximized in years past, and get there. The other thing is, I want them to make them. Ant Robinson’s percentages isn’t where it needs to be with the ones he’s taken. And the same with Sebastian Mack, and I think other guys have left some, some opportunities on the board. We do a great job in practice, working on those free throws and impacting the game. And we talk about the emphasis, we just got to maximize the opportunities. Just like our open, some of our open shots, open 3-point shots, we got to knock down when we get the opportunity.”
Question: In the preseason, you mentioned that you might think it takes about 800 3-point attempts across the season as well to be at the rate that you would like. How do you balance that with wanting to take more free throws, make more free throws than the other team?
Gates: “You can’t settle with the mid-range shots as much. The guys to that shoots them, they need to be the ones that consistently show the percentage in practice. So being able to shoot the non-rim 2s versus the, the, the rim 2s is important. So maximizing that, getting angles, getting easy touches, being able to magnify and create passing opportunities, extra passes can get that the ball movement helps. You know, if you’re making the 3s great, I don’t want to live and die by 3s.
“There’s by no means. I want the guys that are at the high percentage to shoot those. I mean not having Jayden Stone and not having Trent Pierce. You know, that hurts. That hurts. It’s just what it is. The gravity on the rim. But I want Luke Northweather. I want Jacob Crews, I want those guys to be able to knock down their shots when they get them. And I think Crews is doing a great job. He’s one of the nation’s leading 3-point shooters, and Luke Northweather is doing a great job as well. So our guys is just still be aggressive.”
Question: With Ant and Sebastian, is there a specific change you want to see from them offensively when they have the ball in their hands that you think could lead to more attempts from the line?
Gates: “Pace, being able to play with pace. I think too often we’re analytically frozen, instead of using instincts. I want these guys to use their instincts and stop trying to be perfect, so to speak. There’s a way to play basketball and also a way not to. You can’t play it thinking as much as those guys are, because at that point you stagnate your instincts.”
Question: What do you feel like the team could do a better job of on the defensive end?
Gates: “Defensive end, I think, minimizing rotation, which means do a better job guarding the ball, guarding the dribble, being able to not collapse your defensive shell. Instead of having, oftentimes, and I showed T.O. (Barrett), T.O. is such an active player that he was often rotating from a spot that did not require him rotating, and that takes away the second side. And he has to have discipline in allowing someone else to stop the baseline seal.
“And he gets to a MIG, and that’s the Most Important Guy, or a goalie-type of situation where he’s Xing out the weak side. Oftentimes we’re having two guys running after the ball. And I think that’s where our discipline has to improve. And that’s the clips that our guys have shown have been shown by me, and they’ve corrected it thus far. So we just needed to show up in the game.”
Question: Going forward, where would you like to see Jevon Porter improve?
Gates: “I want, I want Jevon (Porter) to continue to get better in his transition from being the hunter to the hunted. Oftentimes, when you have a transfer from mid-major to high-major, there’s a philosophy and mentality. Jevon being at Pepperdine at LMU, he knows what it means to play against high-majors. Now, you are the high-major playing against others, and I want his point of attack to be a little bit different.
“I want his precision to be different. He is not the 3-point shooter that his stats show. I want him to just calm down and be OK and just, you know, be patient with being able to catch and shoot. Because his percentage is low from 3. I don’t want him to stop taking it. Because over the end of the, over his career, he’s shown the ability to get that percentage a little bit higher than what it is. Rebounding, I want his rebounding to go up. And obviously that’ll dictate his aggression.”
Question: When you say analytically frozen ball handling, what is that and what is the opposite that you’re looking for?
Gates: “They’re analyzing a lot. It’s not from an analytical statistics standpoint. It’s just analyzing the defense and just trying to do something perfect, versus doing it at 110 percent aggression and then reading from that position. But if they’re just scanning and frozen and not penetrating the defense, not getting points in the paint and not getting paint touches, I think those two specifically has been, they’ve been driving the ball to score. They need to drive to ball, drive the ball to collapse the defense to be able to kick. And now that will open up different opportunities. Because if now teams see them kick, it won’t be less, it will be less traffic in that area. And they’ll be able to easily decide to score. So that’s what I mean by that.”
Question: With Sebastian, he’s been at about 20+ minutes per game, he played 18 total the last two games. What led to the decision to kind of reduce his role?
Gates: “Accountability, accountability. Notre Dame, game, Sebastian, we went from walk through and just point of emphasis when you, when you’re changing different defensive schemes from one school to the next, scouting report errors aren’t acceptable on the road at all. You may be able to get away from it and get better during home games. But on the road, it’ll put you behind. And that was the reason why I decided to minimize his minutes. He’s been awesome, and I hadn’t seen those same mistakes show up.
“So accountability is a little bit different, and he’s doing a good job. I think he’s making the transition again, no different than Jevon. The question is, how much time it takes? I think when you look at road games, those are completely different games than home games. Now, the question is, scheduling. There’s a lot of teams that have over scheduled. I don’t care how you look at it, I’m not going to over schedule. So, you know, there may be talks about the schedule. No, no, no. We are at the same spot we were the last three years in terms of being able to maximize what we need to maximize.
“The only change I would make is trying to offset the ACC road with a game like a Kansas and not put too much pressure in one year with back-to-back road games like that. And then you can see a different version of your team playing against no different like a Minnesota at home, but now have a Notre Dame at home, and then a Kansas on the road. Or Kansas at home, and then possibly a Notre Dame on the road. And that’ll give you a different complex of what, what scheduling is. But as it relates to those opportunities, they’ve allowed us to grow. It’s great being, you know, eight-win team right now. I know a lot of teams will want eight wins, and we’re just searching for the ninth, and we weren’t able to get it the last two games.”
Question: These past couple of games, you touched on it a little bit before. But where do you see your team struggling in the half court offensively? Where do you think, what do you think can improve going forward?
Gates: “Ball movement? I think that will be the most important thing if I had to make that decision. I think our guys have seen from our film what we can improve on, and I’ve shown them exactly what we can improve on. Especially when you look at those middle eight minutes, whether Ant Robinson is playing or not, we still have a responsibility. And the analogy that I used was along the lines of a football team just trying to hit Hail Marys or throw Hail Marys, or a baseball team just going in a batter’s box, swinging to hit home runs in the entire time. You got to have to beat, beat teams in baseball, you got to force their pitcher to have a high pitch count.
“So time of possession is one of them during those middle eight minutes that we got to make sure we going to have time feeling good about ourselves and coming out of halftime feeling good that, that ball is kind of moving from side to side, whether we make or missed a shot, we got to give ourselves a chance to go against a defense and give a defense a chance to make mistakes, and I don’t think we’ve done that.”