Four members of the University of Missouri men’s basketball team were honored on the NABC All-Central District Team on Tuesday.
Whitten Family Men’s Basketball Head Coach Dennis Gates was honored as Central Region Coach of the Year, while three Tigers – Tamar Bates, Caleb Grill and Mark Mitchell – earned second-team accolades. Mizzou was one of just two schools to have three all-district players in the Central Region – which includes all programs from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska and Tennessee – with Kentucky being the second school with three honorees.
Gates has led the Tigers to one of the biggest turnarounds in the country this season. At 22-11, Mizzou has surpassed its win total by 14 games and finished sixth in the SEC standings with a 10-8 overall mark, easily topping its preseason prediction of 13th place. Gates has led the Tigers to their second NCAA Tournament in three seasons as head coach and is also a semifinalist for the Naismith Coach of the Year award.
Bates is third on the team with 13.4 points per game and is the only player in the nation shooting 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the free-throw line. He is also first in the country by making 94.3 percent of his free-throw attempts this season and has led the team in scoring 10 times – the most of any Tiger.
The SEC Sixth Man of the Year, Grill is second on the team with 13.7 points off the bench. He enters the NCAA Tournament ranked 39th in the nation with a 3-point clip of 40.5 percent, while placing second among all players with fewer than five starts with his 13.7 points per game.
An All-SEC Second Team honoree by the media and third-team selection by the coaches, Mitchell leads Mizzou with 14.1 points per game, while ranking second with 4.6 rebounds. Overall, he is one of just 13 players nationally to total 450 points, 125 rebounds, 60 assists, 30 steals and 25 assists in 2024-25.
Earning a bid to the NCAA Tournament for a 30th time in school history, Mizzou opens the postseason on Thursday night as the sixth-seeded Tigers take on 11th-seeded Drake. Tipoff is set for 6:35 p.m. on truTV in Wichita, Kansas.
