there, the popular former collegiate star Gill was able to win an appointment at his alma mater as an instructor of physical education and director of restricted gymnastics for the 1926–27 academic year. Gill was also tapped to serve as head coach of the OAC freshman men's basketball team and to help coordinate the school's program of intramural athletics and general gymnastics. The 1926–27 freshman team proved to be a bit of a disaster, losing every game on its schedule, so in December 1927 Gill organized a mass try out for the 1927–28 squad. An incredible 106 aspirants responded to Gill's call to try out for the team, with the horde winnowed down to a squad of 25 through successive cuts. In the summer of 1928, OAC's varsity head coach Bob Hager was fired by university president William Jasper Kerr. Kerr did not need to look far for his replacement, promoting the 27-year old Gill from freshman to varsity head coach. Under Gill, the Beavers basketball team would come to be known for a fundamentally sound and defensively oriented style of play. On the other side of the ball, Gill was known for making use of a slow, methodical "percentage offense" built around the meticulous creation of short shots and free throw opportunities from a half-court set. His teams were frequently involved in low-scoring defensive struggles. In the years before video tape and legions of professional advanced scouts, Gill was regarded as a formidable game scout and adaptive defensive coach, the subject of a legend in the early 1940s that if "Gill has seen your basketball team in action, then his team will beat yours if the two are ever matched." During Gill's 36-year tenure as head coach, Oregon State won five Pacific Coast Conference titles, four Northern Division championships, and a pair of Final Four appearances (1949 and 1963). His teams won eight consecutive Far West Classic titles, and Gill had 599 coaching victories with the Beavers, with a winning percentage of .604. Following a game in Seattle in early 1960, Gill suffered a heart attack in his hotel room while with his wife. He was taken to Providence Hospital and stayed for more than three weeks. For the duration of his convalescence, head coaching duties were assumed by assistant coach Paul Valenti. As past president of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, Slats coached in the 1964 NABC