MANHATTAN, Kan. — Jerome Tang made a strong first impression on the Kansas State men’s basketball team.
Shortly after meeting Tang on Wednesday evening, every returning scholarship player on the Wildcats’ roster came together and decided to give their new coach a chance. They were all in attendance for his introductory news conference on Thursday and many of them admitted he had them dreaming big when it was over.
“Everything we have to do in the future needs to be about winning,” sophomore K-State guard Nijel Pack said. “He told us from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night that everything we do needs to be about winning. So that is what we are going to do in the future.”
Tang, a 55-year old veteran assistant who helped Scott Drew transform Baylor into a national power over the past 19 years, energized K-State fans and players alike as he reflected on his career and made a few predictions about the future in front of a room packed with purple.
His opening statement: “It’s a great day to be a Wildcat.”
His closing remarks: “I’m not here to rebuild. I’m here to elevate.”
In between, he made sure to let the K-State players in attendance know that any success the program has under his watch will be because of them. He didn’t come to Manhattan for credit. He left Baylor to win as a head coach and to help turn his players into men. He promised to attend their weddings and hang pictures of their children on his refrigerator.
Sad as some K-State players were to see Bruce Weber resign after his third consecutive losing season earlier this month, they seemed just as eager to play for Tang.
“Man, I’m excited,” Pack said. “It was cool to finally get to meet him after seeing everything online about him. I’ve heard he is a great coach. Obviously being at Baylor and all the things that they’ve done. It’s really exciting to get him at this program to see what he can do for us and help us become better.”
K-State point guard Markquis Nowell has been Tang’s biggest supporter. Ever since he learned that Tang was considered a favorite for the job, he began doing some research on him. Turns out, he liked everything he found.
Nowell even brought a basketball to Tang’s news conference, as if he hoped to play for him when it was over.
“He is the type of guy I want to be around,” Nowell said. “When I first met him we were talking about what you can do if you get 1% better each and every day. If we do that over the course of the next six months, we are going to be doing something great.”
Tang had positive things to say about his new backcourt, as well. It’s not a given that both Nowell and Pack will return next season, as Pack is currently testing the NBA Draft waters as an early entrant, but Tang has high hopes for them if they remain together.
He called them “one of the top three backcourts in the Big 12” and had incredibly nice things to say about Nowell.
“I love him,” Tang said. “Pound for pound, he was the toughest player in the Big 12 last year. I still have the vision of him guarding Kevin McCullar and Kevin tried to back him down. And then Kevin spun middle and beat him and Markquis rips the ball out of his hands and got the big steal. I was so juiced when I watched that, and I wasn’t even there. I was at Baylor and it still made me say, ‘Holy cow. This dude is a problem.’”
Tang said Baylor was fortunate to sweep K-State this past season.
In hindsight, he’s not quite sure why the Wildcats only won 14 games with the talent they had on their team.
“There were times I watched the team and I said, ‘Man, this is a NCAA Tournament team,’” Tang said. “There were other times I would watch them and go, ‘Man, what the heck happened.’ No knock on anybody. They had people missing, there were injuries and all those things. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that as a coach scouting them they made me nervous. But then when I got the job it made me excited.”
Listening to Tang talk for only a little while was enough for players to think the same thing.
“We definitely felt like we underachieved this year,” K-State forward Ismael Massoud said. “It’s been hard watching the NCAA Tournament and seeing all these teams we beat. We were right there. But you can’t look in the past. We’re excited about the future.”
So much so, that the Wildcats are already making plans for next March.
“We’ve got a lot of talent around us. We are all getting older and getting more experience,” Pack said. “I believe we’re definitely a NCAA Tournament team. We should be playing at this time next year, for sure.”
