Gary Waters and Cleveland St.

[Niels Boar]

If that name sounds familiar, it should.  He probably deserves the credit for Heath getting the Arkansas job.  The Kent St. job opened up when Waters departed for Rutgers.  He left a 24-game winning team that won an NCAAT game over Indiana and had almost everybody returning.  Had he stayed one more year, he might have been our coach.  Heath added super athlete Antonio Gates to that nucleus, and the rest is history.  Waters may have chosen the wrong program to enter power conference BB.  He flamed out at Rutgers, probably not hard to do.  In three years at Cleveland St. they have gone from 10 to 21 to 22 wins and an NCAAT berth.

Sidebar: Gates switched from Fresno St. to Kent St. because Oronde Taliaferro was his high school coach.