Georgia Basketball: 8 candidates to replace Tom Crean as head coach

Dennis Gates

When Crean was hired by Georgia, they were bringing in a big-time former power conference coach and hoping he could work his magic at a third different school. This was not the case, and Georgia isn’t likely to just throw their hopes and dreams at another retread hire. Instead, why not start things off by looking at one of the hotter names on the mid-major market?

Gates is a Chicago native who has playing or coaching experience across the country, including a brief stint under Crean at Marquette. He spent eight years as an assistant to Leonard Hamilton at Florida State, getting valuable experience at the power conference level. For the last three years, he’s been head coach at Cleveland State and has done a phenomenal job turning around the Vikings’ program, leading them to two straight Horizon League regular-season titles and a trip to the NCAA Tournament last year.

After all of his time in Tallahassee, Gates certainly knows the area well and has shown he could be a successful recruiter for the Bulldogs. More importantly, he knows how to get the most out of his players; he’s certainly not got an SEC-quality roster at Cleveland State but is still winning a ton of games. Gates only has those three years of head coaching experience and it’s fair to wonder how he’d handle the jump up from the Horizon League, but you can’t deny that he’s a rising name.