K-State AD still has ‘ton of confidence’ in Jerome Tang, but this change is ‘critical’
Jerome Tang’s spellbinding first season at Kansas State ended a strand from the Final Four with a 79-76 loss to Florida Atlantic in the Elite Eight. And with the third-most wins (26) in Wildcats history — more than in the two previous seasons combined (23).
The skyrocketing debut hinted at something big bubbling in Manhattan. And when Tang said after that game in Madison Square Garden that he wouldn’t trade that team “for anything in the world,” well, no doubt K-State fans felt the same about him and what he was doing with the program.
Two years later, though, the trajectory distinctly has dipped. So much so it’s hard not to at least consider whether that season was a one-hit wonder or maybe the burst of a supernova.
Last season, after all, K-State finished 19-15 and failed to make the NCAA Tournament.
And with a 70-56 loss to Baylor in the second round of the Big 12 Tournament on Wednesday night at T-Mobile Center, the encore was a 16-17 record that apparently will mark the end of their season: As Tang told The Star’s Kellis Robinett, the school isn’t likely to accept an invitation to one of the consolation postseason tournaments.
“It’s never easy when the season ends …” Tang said in his postgame news conference, hinting at the finality. “Because you never want it to end. Not because of the outcome. It’s because of the end of the relationships. Because the team is never the same the next year.”
While it’s too early to know just how much of this team will be back, the broader point is fundamental for the future of Tang and K-State.
The team, in fact, needs to not be the same next year.
More accurately, it’s the overall framework that needs a reset.
Take it from Tang himself, as told by athletic director Gene Taylor.
He’s got to focus more on building a program, Taylor remembered Tang recently saying, as opposed to a team.
“And I think that’s really critical,” Taylor said in an interview with The Star after the game.
To clarify, Taylor reiterated his faith in Tang and the staff and agreed with a suggestion that that first season may have warped expectations.
He still has what he called “a ton of confidence,” he said, and isn’t “at all concerned.” Any frustrations he feels are “for” the team and the staff, not toward them.
Because he knows Tang can recruit and coach the X’s and O’s, and he admires how he treats players and handles being out in the community and with fans and donors.
“I mean, it’s a big picture,” Taylor said, “and he has all of that going.”
Just the same …
“It’s just (that) he’s got to figure out what the right group is for K-State and for his style of basketball,” he said.
In essence, that’s the most daunting dilemma of our times in college sports: how to construct rosters amid the relentless flux of the NIL/transfer portal/payday era.
And how to be optimally developmental and transactional in an increasingly mercenary environment.
“In this sport in particular,” Taylor said, “their world has changed so much.”
As it happens, Tang’s prosperous first team, rather by necessity, featured 11 new scholarship players.
But it turned out that wasn’t exactly a stopgap measure.
Perhaps emboldened or skewed by that initial success, the turnstile approach became the prevailing way.
This season, that was bookended by a recruiting class of nine transfers and just one freshman, a dynamic that assures minimal continuity and more churn over any enduring stability and cohesion.
By way of a desirable example, Taylor pointed to Houston’s veteran roster.
“You’re always going to have some (transfers) … but I don’t think (nine) is sustainable in the long run,” he said.
A long run is absolutely what Taylor wants for Tang, who last year signed a contract extension through 2031 that could ultimately be worth $28 million.
And he expects that the 58-year-old still is growing as a coach less than three years since Taylor hired him to replace Bruce Weber after Tang had served nearly two decades as an assistant at Baylor.
“I keep reminding myself, ‘Dude, he’s still learning as a head coach in a very crazy time,’” Taylor said, later adding that he saw Tang mature through the ups and downs of this season. “I think he’ll continue to learn to figure it out, and I think we’ll be fine.”
But not without a philosophical reboot.
Because this direction doesn’t seem sustainable in the long run.