Kansas State Basketball: It Needed to Happen — and more

By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard the news. Jerome Tang was relieved of his head coaching duties, for cause, by Kansas State on Sunday. I’ll let the lawyers fight it out over what constitutes “for cause” because that’s decidedly not my lane. Basketball is my lane, and I do know this:

Coach Tang needed to be fired.

It was his job to build a sustainable program. Not individual one-off teams, but an actual basketball program. He failed miserably. His program has no foundation. I’m not sure what a Jerome Tang team is supposed to look like in theory, much less in practice, and it’s been four seasons.

This was from an article I wrote on May 15, 2022:

Not going to lie to y’all, I’m a bit confused about what’s going on with Kansas State basketball at the moment…

I was a little taken aback by his statement that “when I was coming in, I thought there were only three guys I would want to stay.” That’s nothing, if not a bold statement, but one facilitated by the current state of college basketball.

At the very least, we can take the “kids should want to play for a school and not a coach” narrative, douse it in gasoline, and toss a match.

I dug up this old article, not because I wanted to dunk on anyone. I said plenty of positive things about Coach Tang during the 2023 season. Still, I could just as easily have changed “kids should want to play for a school and not a coach” to “kids should want to play for a school, not whoever offers them the most money” or “kids should want to play for the name on the front of the jersey, not the back” and hit the nail directly on the head.

Coach Tang continually signed guys who made it clear they were only interested in the name on the back of the jersey and a paycheck. He appears shocked that those same players didn’t show passion for a school most of them had never heard of, much less considered playing for, until Coach Tang and company showed up with a checkbook. I’m not sure what the history requirements are for Charter Oak State College (where Tang received his bachelor’s degree); however, a quick perusal of a military history book would have informed him that mercenary armies aren’t sustainable and can’t be trusted to stand their ground and fight when things look bleak.

You can buy basketball players, but you can’t buy passion or loyalty.

I keep coming back to faith.

It’s certainly a subject that Coach Tang hasn’t shied away from during his tenure. While I’m certainly not questioning his faith in the spiritual matters, he doesn’t appear to have much faith in his players or assistant coaches. Instead of building a sustainable program, where kids who want to play for Kansas State come into the program as wet behind the ears freshmen and leave battle-hardened Big 12 seniors, he’s built a series of mercenary squads that hang around Manhattan as long as it takes their final game check to clear. I’ll bet a few guys didn’t even wait around that long before blowing town for their next paycheck. I don’t blame the players, because Coach Tang has been clear throughout his tenure that he doesn’t have the time or patience to wait for a player, even one he spent time and money recruiting, to reach full basketball maturity.

What About the 2023 Season?

At this point, it’s hard to chalk it up to anything other than pure luck because he’s shown no ability to replicate the trick.

Bruce left him a dynamic 5’8”, 160-pound point guard who was second in the Big 12 in assist percentage the previous and oozed leadership from his pores.

Keyontae Johnson fell into his lap late after getting medically cleared to return to basketball after almost dying on the court in 2020. You don’t find many First Team All-SEC forwards just hanging out in the transfer portal these days.

Tomlin was an NBA talent who wasn’t on anyone else’s radar because he didn’t play high school basketball or graduate from high school. If you give Nae’Quan a normal high school basketball back-story, he’s a 5* recruit who doesn’t give Kansas State a look.

In terms of pure talent, his 2023 roster is clearly his best.

It was also impossible to replicate.

Not going to lie, though, it was an incredibly fun season, and I understand why he received the contract extension. If Kansas State didn’t give it to him, someone else would have, and everyone would have been extremely upset. Coach Tang’s agent struck when the iron was hot and secured the bag for his client. Job well done, I suppose. Gene Taylor did what everyone demanded he do, and that doesn’t leave you with a ton of room to negotiate. If he didn’t secure Tang after an Elite 8 run, by any means necessary, he would have been tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

Everything After 2023

What does a Jerome Tang team even look like?

It’s been four seasons, and I still don’t have a clue.

Coach Tang has spent the last three seasons throwing basketball feces at the wall and hoping a picture emerges. He’s tried playing fast, he’s tried playing slow. He prioritized defense in the portal at one point. This season, he clearly prioritized offense.

Then again, maybe he didn’t prioritize anything?

I also write about Purdue and Clemson basketball. I know what Matt Painter and Brad Brownell look for in a player. Matt selects for skill over athleticism and attempts to make up for it on the defensive side of things with a massive center patrolling the lane.

Brad Brownell selects for defense. He had to rebuild his entire roster last offseason after a bumper crop of long-term players graduated, and I knew exactly how everyone he signed from the portal fit into his system. Clemson did in 2026 what Kansas State has been attempting the last three seasons.

I have no clue what Jerome Tang looks for in a player, and I’m not sure he does either. I spent all off-season saying, “I’m not sure what’s going on. This doesn’t make any sense. How does he expect these guys to fit together?”

That was before the panicked European spending spree that landed him exactly nothing other than enough bodies to fill out the roster and the panicked purchase of PJ Haggerty. I can envision a roster built around Haggerty, and it looks nothing like the hodgepodge of basketball vagabonds and mercenaries he’s surrounded by this season. Of course, that’s because this team wasn’t built for PJ Haggerty; that would require planning and forethought. I’m not sure what this team was built to do, other than lose basketball games, and that’s even with the late addition of an All-American, ball-dominant guard.

Jerome Tang wasn’t fired because he blew up in a post-game press conference. He was fired because he’s a bad head basketball coach who burned through piles of cash assembling some of the most mismatched, incoherent rosters ever to take the floor in a college basketball game.

I hope the press conference was enough to knock a couple of million dollars off his buyout, but if K-State has to bite the bullet and pay his entire buyout, this move was still worth it.

Y’all deserve better.

I look forward to writing about brighter Wildcat basketball days in the near future.

Sports teams from across New England have released statements after a gunman murdered two people before shooting himself at a high school hockey tournament in Rhode Island .

This is a crazy bit of meme-worthy content for sports fans.