CBS Sports College Hoops Analyst Dan Bonner On The Coach Maryland Should Target

With the 2021-22 Maryland basketball season coming to a close and hopes for an NCAA Tournament appearance remaining slim, the Terps’ coaching search is set to seriously begin.

Interim head coach Danny Manning will likely not return as head coach. As such, Maryland will soon accelerate its process in finding a permanent successor to Mark Turgeon. Turgeon and the school decided to part ways in early December.

Some names that have been mentioned are Ed Cooley (Providence), Nate Oats (Alabama) and Andy Enfield (USC). There’s another name most people haven’t heard of that might be a perfect fit for the program, according to CBS Sports college hoops analyst Dan Bonner.

“This is a guy I don’t think they’ll even take a look at, but Dennis Gates, the head coach at Cleveland State,” Bonner said on Glenn Clark Radio Feb. 28. “Two-time Horizon League Coach of the Year. They [were] the No. 1 team in the Horizon League again this year, and that’s one of those leagues where you’re only getting one bid, so you have to win the conference tournament to get to the NCAA Tournament, but he has taken his teams to NCAA Tournaments.”

Gates might not satisfy Maryland fans because of his low profile, but during an assistant coaching stint at Florida State (2011-2019), he was part of seven NCAA Tournament teams, two Sweet 16 runs and one Elite Eight run. The Seminoles also won the ACC tournament in 2012. He has been around other solid programs such as Marquette, California, Northern Illinois and Nevada as a grad assistant or assistant coach.

Those Seminoles teams would not have been the same without Gates.

“At Florida State, he helped recruit guys like Jonathan Isaac, Xavier Rathan-Mayes, Dwayne Bacon, Trent Forrest, M.J. Walker and there’s a whole string of guys who have played in the NBA,” Bonner said. “That is the pedigree of a person who can recruit, the pedigree of a person who can coach, the pedigree of a person who has long experience in coaching, but again, is he a flashy enough name to satisfy the Maryland fan base? What I would say is he is exactly the kind of person that they should be looking for.”

Going back to the “bigger” names, what would it take for them to leave their current situations for Maryland? Would they leave the programs they have helped make successful? Would they want to start over? Would they want to leave a program where they are happy?

Cooley, despite only winning one NCAA Tournament game, has been an incredibly successful coach at Providence. He led the Friars to the Big East regular-season title in 2022 to go along with a Big East tournament championship in 2014. He has made the NCAA Tournament five times and he is in the midst of his most successful season ever.

“He is a native of Providence and he’s beloved in Providence,” Bonner said. “… The first thing anybody is going to do about the Maryland job is call up Mark. Let’s face it, Mark was never popular with the Maryland fans, not from the day he got hired, but these are the same fans who ran off Gary Williams because he wouldn’t dig too deeply into that AAU cesspool. … Why would Ed Cooley, in a position where he is beloved, why would he want to walk into a situation like that, no matter how much money they can offer him?”

Oats, the former Buffalo head coach and current Alabama head coach, has only completed two full seasons with the Crimson Tide, but he has already made a Sweet 16 and appears to be headed back to the NCAA Tournament this year. His tenure at Alabama may only be beginning.

Enfield has more than a decade of head coaching experience at Florida Gulf Coast and USC. He was the head coach for FGCU in 2013, when the Eagles made a Cinderella run as a No. 15 seed, beating No. 2 seed Georgetown in the first round and No. 7 seed San Diego State in the second round before losing to No. 3 seed Florida in the Sweet 16.

In eight full seasons at USC, Enfield has made the NCAA Tournament three times (likely four times had there been a tournament in 2020), and the Trojans are on their way to another NCAA Tournament appearance this year. He was also named the 2021 Pac-12 Coach of the Year.

Maryland doesn’t have to exclusively target current head coaches, either. Assistant coaches have proven to be successful as well when taking a step up. If Maryland hires an assistant coach from another program, fans should not necessarily worry, according to Bonner.

“Arizona is doing pretty well with a guy [Tommy Lloyd] who was never a head coach, who was an assistant [before he took the job],” Bonner said. “Years ago, Kansas, one of the country’s top programs, hired a little-known assistant coach named Roy Williams and that didn’t go too badly for them.”

It all comes back to the question of whether or not the Maryland job is good enough for a current head coach in a good situation to put his happiness aside.

“Happiness is the most important thing,” Bonner said. “If you’re someplace where you’re happy and you’re content then there is no job that is worth taking. The guy who demonstrated that year after year after year before he created a job that is now one of those jobs is [Gonzaga head coach] Mark Few. I had actually talked to him about this over the years and happy means an awful lot.”

Update: USC announced an extension with Andy Enfield March 9.

For more from Bonner, listen to the full interview here:

Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox