To make it memorable, Mizzou’s turnaround season needs exclamation point in NCAA play

As University of Missouri coach Dennis Gates spoke Sunday evening about MU’s berth in the NCAA Tournament, he offered appreciation of the feat in the sort of way you might have expected Academy Award winners to convey at the Oscars later in the night.

It’s a “special, special thing,” he said, “to have your name called.”

Beyond the tangible efforts of his team and his staff, he added, it took everything from Mizzou administration to Columbia itself to make this possible only a year after the Tigers finished 12-21.

“It takes a village for these days to happen,” said Gates, whose seventh-seeded Tigers (24-9) will play No. 10 seed Utah State (26-8) in a South Regional game at 12:40 p.m. Central on Thursday in Sacramento. “And it’s a lot of people behind the scenes who may not get the credit, and I want to thank them as well.”

Not that Gates had to be played off the podium with cutoff music.

Because he understands that the remarkable turnaround he orchestrated in his first regular season ultimately stands as just a portal to the opportunity to truly distinguish this season.

That’s why his conversations with athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois, he said, aren’t just about “where we were but also where we’re trying to go.” And why he has spoken frequently since his first news conference last year about his immediate goal to take Mizzou to what would be its first Final Four.

As it should be.

Without imposing any artificial limits on what this team could do, though, we’re looking forward to seeing it check off first things first.

To make this season not just memorable but significant and something with all the more transformational traction, to wake up the echoes of the once-proud program gone dormant for too long, MU at least must win its first NCAA Tournament game since 2010 — and end its longest drought in NCAA play since the gap between 1944 and 1976.

Since the Tigers beat Clemson 86-78 in Buffalo in 2010, they’ve lost six straight NCAA tourney games and had four coaches leave or get fired before Reed-Francois hired Gates from Cleveland State after last season.

That past has no bearing on this, of course.

But it’s still a streak that will loom until it doesn’t any more.

Whatever happens in the tournament, we should add, there’s little doubt that Gates was a brilliant hire — one that should have merited Southeastern Conference coach of the year honors.

Entering NCAA play, he could hardly have had a more instant impact on this team.

That’s why it seems merely an incidental footnote that only six players on MU’s roster ever have played in an NCAA Tournament game and none has been in a winning one.

This season has been all about Gates, who is 0-1 in the NCAA Tournament, and the Tigers defying perceived limitations.

It wasn’t just that his team doubled MU’s victory total of a year ago.

It’s that he recruited and then shepherded a dynamic, unselfish and crowd-pleasing team out of parts that wouldn’t necessarily appear immediately compatible: three returnees, eight transfers (including two from junior colleges) and freshman Aidan Shaw (Blue Valley).

He’s already reset the program. And testimony to the about-face he has coaxed went beyond the victories.

According to reporting by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch through an open records request, last season Mizzou Arena scanned an average of 3,399 tickets a game.

This season, seven games at the 15,061-capacity venue were sold out and the average announced attendance through 18 home games was 11,377 — fourth in the Southeastern Conference and 31st in Division 1.

Per Mizzou, the 62.6 percent increase in attendance from last season was the highest increase nationally among Power 6 conference schools.

So MU was wise to enhance and extend his contract.

On Saturday, when his team became MU’s first to reach an SEC Tournament semifinal, the school announced that it had added a year (through the 2028-2029 season) and given him a raise from a $2.5 million base salary this season to $4 million next season — with guaranteed increases of $100,000 annually thereafter.

“We are on an upward trajectory with Coach Gates leading our men’s basketball program,” Reed-Francois said in a statement about the contract. “We have seen the program’s immediate results through wins on the court, record-setting numbers in the classroom and creating enthusiasm in our community.

“Coach Gates has talked openly about his goals of winning championships and hanging banners in Mizzou Arena, and I believe we are on that path under his leadership.”

That path is about the long haul, of course.

But it’s also about right here, right now against a fine Utah State team, which earned an at-large berth after losing to San Diego State in the Mountain West title game.

The Aggies are coached by Ryan Odom, who knows something about getting his team ready as a first-round underdog: His UMBC (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) Retrievers made tournament history in 2018 when they became the first No. 16 seed to topple a No. 1 when they defeated Virginia 74-54.

If MU wins, it will advance to play Saturday against the winner of the Arizona-Princeton game.

But, yep, first things first.

Because as special as just having their name called might be, now is the time to make it remembered.