SEC Musical Chairs Update: Missouri Close To Hiring Cleveland State's Dennis Gates - LSU, Miss. State, South Carolina Still Scrambling

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Missouri appeared close to hiring Cleveland State coach Dennis Gates on Saturday afternoon, according to multiple reports - one day after Florida hired Todd Golden away from San Francisco as the SEC March Madness of coaching musical chairs continues.

PowerMizzou.com reported that Missouri's Board of Curators were expected to meet about Gates.

Should Missouri finalize the hiring of Gates, there would still be three SEC schools looking for men's basketball coaches - South Carolina, Mississippi State and LSU. There were six shortly after the regular season ended - Georgia, Missouri, LSU, Florida, Mississippi State and South Carolina.

Georgia was the first of the six to fire its coach, Tom Crean, and first to hire a new one in Florida coach Mike White, who swapped rival schools.

SEC Job Fair: The league just means more coaching openings

Gates, 42, inherited a 10-21 program that went 5-13 in the Horizon League in 2018-19. He went 11-21 overall and 7-11 in his first season in 2019-20.

In 2020-21, Gates put Cleveland State in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2009 and finished 19-8 overall and as Horizon League champions with a 16-4 mark. The Vikings won the Horizon League again in 2022 and finished 20-11 overall after a loss in the first round of the NIT.

A Chicago native, Gates was an assistant coach at Florida State from 2011-19 before getting the Cleveland State job. He previously was an assistant at California, where he played, and at Northern Illinois and at Nevada. Missouri fired coach Cuonzo Martin after five seasons following the SEC Tournament.

Gates makes $550,000 a year at Cleveland State.

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Guilbeau joined OutKick as an SEC columnist in September of 2021 after covering LSU and the Saints for 17 years at USA TODAY Louisiana. He has been a national columnist/feature writer since the summer of 2022, covering college football, basketball and baseball with some NFL, NBA, MLB, TV and Movies and general assignment, including hot dog taste tests. A New Orleans native and Mizzou graduate, he has consistently won Associated Press Sports Editors (APSE) and Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) awards since covering Alabama and Auburn at the Mobile Press-Register (1993-98) and LSU and the Saints at the Baton Rouge Advocate (1998-2004). In 2021, Guilbeau won an FWAA 1st for a game feature, placed in APSE Beat Writing, Breaking News and Explanatory, and won Beat Writer of the Year from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association (LSWA). He won an FWAA columnist 1st in 2017 and was FWAA's top overall winner in 2016 with 1st in game story, 2nd in columns, and features honorable mention. Guilbeau completed a book in 2022 about LSU's five-time national champion coach - "Everything Matters In Baseball: The Skip Bertman Story" - that is available at www.acadianhouse.com, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble outlets. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife, the former Michelle Millhollon of Thibodaux who previously covered politics for the Baton Rouge Advocate and is a communications director.