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From Jon Rothstein:
Sources: Missouri's Dennis Gates will hire Florida State's Charlton Young as Associate Head Coach.
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) April 7, 2022
Deal is for three years and in excess of $1.8 million dollars in total.
A significant hire by Gates.
Gates and Young worked together at Florida State.
First, congrats to Dennis Gates on landing a pretty big fish. Charlton “C.Y.” Young has been an integral part of the recruiting and development at Florida State for the last 9 seasons. He’s been credited with being the lead recruiting on recent 5-star and NBA draftees M.J. Walker and Patrick Williams, and current Seminole and 5-star wing Matthew Cleveland. He was also previously at Georgia Tech under Paul Hewitt when he was the lead recruiter for Thaddeus Young (no relation that I can tell) and Derrick Favors.
Young is a Miami, Florida native and played collegiately at Georgia Southern, and spent time as an assitant at Chattanooga, Auburn, Jacksonville, and Northeastern before landing the head coaching job at his Alma Mater of Georgia Southern. He was the Southern Conference Coach of the Year in 2012, and took the Assistant Coaching job at Florida State in 2013, where he’s been since.
So an experienced recruiter, and experienced Assistant Coach, and he’ll be well compensated.
If Rothsteins reporting is correct (and it usually is, he’s well connected if you can get past the weirdness), a 3-year $1.8m deal is significant. Dave Matter had reported the assistant salary pool was $915k. And if you did the math like I did, Young’s annual salary breaks down to $600,000 per year. That leaves $315,000 left over from the pool and two assistant positions left.
There have been some unconfirmed rumors of there being interest between Gates and John A. Logan Head Coach Kyle Smithpeters. Smithpeters is well connected in the Junior College ranks and around the midwest, specifically Illinois. We also know that Ryan Sharbaugh has been helping Gates with his early recruiting, though an unannounced addition which means he could be filling into a position on staff, but not in one of the primary three Assistant spots.
Cleveland State recently announced the hiring of Daniyal Robinson from Iowa State to run the program after Gates. This could potentially free up one or more of Gates Assistants from Cleveland State to join him in Columbia. Sharbaugh was an assistant at Cleveland State, as were Rob Summers and Dru Joyce III. Joyce played high school basketball with LeBron James and collegiately at the University of Akron. Summers played college ball at both Penn State and West Virginia, and is an Ohio native.
It would make sense to have two lesser known assistants being added along with Young. With a proven player getter like Young on staff (complete with a pay and title bump) Gates can afford to bet on upside at a slightly lower cost. But I would still imagine there will be some flexibility built into the staff pool required to make it all work.