Drew has nothing positive to report regarding the men’s basketball program.
The world of transaction-based college basketball is exhausting, and that’s where Coach Tang chooses to reside. Make no mistake, this isn’t a coach getting unlucky with transfers; it’s a coach recruiting the equivalent of college basketball mercenaries. I don’t blame the players; they chose Kansas State because Kansas State offered them the most money. These guys aren’t hiding their intentions.
Mercenaries are loyal to themselves and whoever puts the most money in their pocket.
The latest round of defections was nothing if not predictable:
Dug McDaniel is moving to his third team in four seasons.
Baye Fall is moving on to his third team in three seasons.
Ugonna Onyenso is moving on to his third team in four seasons.
Brendan Hausen is moving on to his third team in four seasons.
Barring what sounds like a long-shot appeal by Max Jones for an additional season of eligibility, Kansas State will return precisely 0% of its 2024-’25 starting lineup.
The leading returning scorer at this moment is rising senior guard Christian Jones, who averaged 5.7 points per game last season. He’s a solid player but not exactly someone you build your roster around.
It appears that former top 100 recruit, point guard David Castillo, will run it back in Manhattan, and maybe he’s a guy you can build around, but that’s all projection. The freshman guard averaged 2.4 points and .8 assists and was barely an afterthought off the bench during K-State’s best run of form. My main issue with Castillo is shooting, or to be more precise, his inability to shoot. He chucked up 67 threes and hit a paltry 17. To make matters exponentially worse, it wasn’t like he was getting to the basket. In fact, he actively avoided driving the ball. I have no idea how you play 320 minutes of college basketball over a season and go 2-19 from two. I understand that shooting threes is essential in the college game, but if he can’t get into the paint, he can’t play point guard, and if he can’t shoot better than 25% from deep, he can’t play on the wing. The Wildcats desperately need him to be something other than the terrible offensive player he was last season.
I don’t see how this can be a winning strategy. Call me old-fashioned, but I still consider basketball a team sport, and teams tend to be better when they play together for more than six months. I personally didn’t find any joy in last season. Even when things were going well, what was the point?
The team wasn’t going to win the Big 12.
The team wasn’t going to make, much less win, the NCAA tournament.
None of the core players were going to return.
Losing sucks, but sometimes you have to lose as a team before you win as a team. The Wildcats gained nothing from last season.
No character was built.
No bonds were forged in the hard times that will pay off during the future good times.
Frankly, it was embarrassing at times, especially considering the price tag.
Serious Question: Is this what y’all want as K-State fans?
Do you prefer assembling a random group of mercenaries every season and hoping against hope for a one-off run in the tournament?
or
Do you prefer something more like the 2015-’16 roster that went 17-16 but featured a freshman class of Dean Wade, Barry Brown, and Kamu Stokes?
Wade, Brown, and Stokes played a combined 384 games for the ‘Cats. They played on a team that won 17 games and a team that made the Elite Eight. They played on a team that finished eighth in the Big 12 and on a team that finished first. We watched them go from green three-star freshmen being overwhelmed in the Big 12 to grizzled veterans hoisting the Big 12 trophy.
That’s missing from this program under Jerome Tang.
These guys aren’t laying it on the line for dear old EMAW; they’re barely in town long enough to learn the Wabash Cannonball. This isn’t why I watch college basketball. To me, Coleman Hawkins will always be the guy who played next to Terrance Shannon at Illinois and feuded with Purdue. He’s not a Wildcat. Tylor Perry will be remembered for his two seasons at North Texas and not for his brief stop in Manhattan. As talented as Arthur Kaluma is (which is moderately), no one will remember his career outside of his friends and family because he didn’t stay in one place long enough for anyone to care.
The program has no roots.
The program has no culture.
The old guys aren’t around to teach the new guys what being a Kansas State Wildcat means.
I’ve pondered how to wrap this up for the last 20 minutes. It’s tough because I like to offer a way forward, and I don’t see one for K-State basketball.
This looks like a program in a death spiral.
Coach Tang either can’t or won’t develop the players he recruits, and he can’t get a team of mercenaries up to speed fast enough to make the tournament without winning big in a brutal Big 12.
He will try the complete rebuild strategy again this offseason, hoping that doing the same thing will yield a different result.
Based on what I learned as a college psych minor, that’s not a good thing.
I hope I’m wrong. I’m still intrigued by the idea of Coach Tang developing a squad over multiple seasons. The man knows how to coach defense, and offense tends to improve year over year if you can keep a core group of guys together. If he can bring in players who actually want to build a program instead of collecting a paycheck, the guy who took the 2022-’23 team to the Elite 8 in thrilling fashion is still on the bench, but color me skeptical.
Key assistants are abandoning ship.
What little recruiting there is isn’t impactful (maybe it could be if he played the guys he recruits?)
Top transfers don’t seem particularly interested in the program this offseason.
It will take a special effort from this rapidly crumbling staff to assemble a tournament team out of portal spare parts. I can’t even hazard a guess on what the roster will look like next season, much less how it will perform on the court. While other teams are perfecting what they do best, this team will be trying to figure it out.
I’m afraid Coach Tang will have one of the strangest career arcs in college basketball history. He’s a good game coach about to be undone by impatience and terrible roster management. It’s been a steep fall from the heights of the Elite Eight run, and the ground is getting closer every second.
I wish I had better news to report, but at least I warned you heading into this article: things are bleak, y’all, and I don’t see them getting better.
At the same time, I’d love to write an article next May quoting this piece and talking about how stupid I am for doubting Coach Tang. I guess we’ll have to see how things play out.
Now it’s time to focus on what could be a historically great Wildcat football team and not think about basketball for a little while.