Matt Gatens Finds His Way Home

Iowa City Native Returns to Coach Hawkeyes

Matt Gatens (GoDrakeBulldogs.com)

IOWA CITY, Iowa - As his Iowa basketball career was fast-breaking its way to the finish line in March of 2012, Matt Gatens was asked to look into the future. He said his plan was to become a coach once his playing days were over.

“I think he would be spectacular at it,” said Fran McCaffery, his coach at Iowa. “His basketball intellect is off the charts. This is a profession where you talk about guys putting hours in, and his work ethic is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

That coaching career has brought Gatens, now married and the father of two, back to the Hawks’ nest. McCaffery announced Thursday that he had hired Gatens away from Drake to replace the retired Kirk Speraw on his staff.

McCaffery is heading into his 13th season at Iowa, matching Tom Davis for the longest run in program history. Gatens helped plant the seeds for that longevity as a player, and will now be asked to add to it as a coach.

Gatens is a legacy Hawkeye. His dad, Mike, played basketball at Iowa. His mom, Julie, was a cheerleader. Mike once served as a team host during the two-day December tournaments Iowa put on for 26 seasons.. McCaffery, in his first season as a Division I head coach, brought Lehigh to the tournament in 1985. Mike Gatens was his team host. McCaffery returned with North Carolina-Greensboro in 2004. Gatens was again his host. Mike brought his family to a team dinner at a downtown Iowa City hotel that year. That’s when McCaffery first met Mike’s son, Matt.

“Crazy how things work out,” Matt said in 2012 when recalling that first meeting.

Now, a decade later, those words ring true again.

“I’m excited to be going back,” Matt said Thursday.

McCaffery has always had a former Iowa player on his coaching staff. Speraw, who played for Lute Olson, became the first former Hawkeye on the staff as a full-time coach since Jim Rosborough and Scott Thompson in 1982-83 when McCaffery hired him in April of 2010.

Gatens will have to work hard to fill Speraw’s shoes. Kirk was a master technician, an outstanding talent evaluator and a tireless worker who poured over practice and game tapes time and time again to help a player get better.

Gatens committed to Iowa and Coach Steve Alford after his freshman season at City High of Iowa City. He wore No. 5 at Iowa in honor of former point guard Andre Woolridge, who he looked up to as a kid. Later, Luke Recker and Reggie Evans became his go-to guys.

Matt started all 128 games of his Iowa career. He scored 1,635 career points, which is 10th all time at Iowa. And his 239 triples ranks third.

It was not easy sledding for Gatens at Iowa. He never played for Alford, and endured two long seasons under Todd Lickliter. It became three straight losing seasons when Iowa went 11-20 in McCaffery’s debut season. But the final home game was a 67-65 upset of No. 6 Purdue, snapping a streak of 23 consecutive losses to ranked teams.

The McCaffery era made a major turn forward in 2011-12, when Gatens averaged 15.2 points and was a second-team all-Big Ten selection as a senior. Iowa finished 18-17, the program’s first winning season 2006-07. The Hawkeyes doubled their Big Ten victories from four to eight, and went 4-3 against Top 25 opponents.

Iowa made the NIT field, its first post-season appearance of any kind since 2005-06. A first-round victory over Dayton was Iowa’s first postseason victory since 2002-03. And a 64-61 victory over Illinois was the first for the program in a Big Ten Tournament game since 2006.

Gatens had his fingers in a lot of those accomplishments, including one memorable February flurry.

It started with a Feb. 16 game at Penn State.. Gatens made five straight second-half 3-pointers to key a comeback that fell short, 69-64. That was followed by two unforgettable victories over ranked teams at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

The first was on Feb. 19 against No. 18 Indiana. After missing six of eight first-half shots from the field, including three triples in four tries, Gatens got a shooting tip from former Iowa star and radio analyst Bobby Hansen as he returned to the court for the second half.

Gatens made all six of his 3-point attempts in the final 20 minutes, and eight of 10 shots overall, while scoring a career-high 30 points in the 78-66 victory. The last five triples came in the final 61/2 minutes, after the Hoosiers had cut a 19-point deficit to 10.

Four nights later, against No. 16 Wisconsin, Gatens made seven of 10 3-pointers and 12 of 18 shots overall while scoring a career-high 33 points. That included two free throws with 3.8 seconds remaining that clinched the 67-66 victory. Wisconsin had come into the game leading the nation in 3-point defense (26.4 percent).

“One of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen,” McCaffery said after the game. “They were on him. He just pulled the trigger. And once he got going, he was on fire.”

Over three halves against ranked foes - the second against Indiana and the two against Wisconsin, Gatens went 20-of-28 from the field and 13-of-16 from 3.

Later, Iowa stopped five straight one-and-done appearances in the Big Ten Tournament by beating Illinois. Down by seven points with 14 minutes remaining, Gatens made a 3-pointer, then turned a steal into a dunk. That 18-second flurry ignited a game-winning 18-4 run.

A loss to Michigan State followed, and Matt’s career was over unless the NIT selected Iowa a few days later.

“Not having another season to look forward to in an Iowa uniform is going to be pretty tough to take,” Gatens said. “But you’ve got to move on to the next phase of your life.”

Iowa did get that bid, beat Dayton at Carver-Hawkeye Arena and then lost at Oregon. And Gatens turned the page to the next phase of his life.

He played professionally overseas in France, Spain, Turkey and Ukraine. He returned to the U.S. to play for the Iowa Energy in the NBA D-League, but a torn ACL early in the 2016-17 season ended his playing career.

He got his coaching start at Auburn under former Iowa assistant Bruce Pearl. He spent the past four seasons at Drake, the first two as director of operations and the last two as an assistant to Darian DeVries.

And now he’s back home, at a program that’s been in his blood since he started dribbling a basketball.