How K-State guard Markquis Nowell has improved so much, so quickly under Jerome Tang
From the moment he stepped foot on Kansas State’s campus last year, it was clear that Markquis Nowell was loaded with basketball talent.
He could dribble past any defender, he could send no-look passes to his teammates all across the court and he could make three-pointers from the halfcourt logo.
What wasn’t clear was how, or if, he could use those skills to play within the team-oriented system that his K-State coaches used in Big 12 games. The 5-foot-8 point guard turned the ball over too often when he started his college career at Arkansas-Little Rock. He also took too many wild and crazy shots quickly into possessions. Nowell still had plenty of good games, but he couldn’t eliminate the bad ones.
Bruce Weber did his best to tame Nowell’s gunslinger mentality last year, and he responded with a solid season (12.4 points, 5 assists and 2.6 turnovers per game). But you could tell he still wanted to do his own thing. That led to some bone-headed plays for a team that only won 14 games.
Things have changed significantly over the past few months. Jerome Tang took over as coach, Nowell learned how to turn down the volume on his aggressive style and he is now looking like one of the most improved players in the Big 12. He is averaging 15.3 points, 7.8 assists and 2.3 turnovers. His team is also off to a 6-0 start.
“He’s more poised,” Tang said. “He’s learning how to stick to his habits in crucial situations, rather than just making stuff up. It’s easy to see it when he’s making stuff up, and it’s easy to see when he’s operating within what we want to do. There have been more moments where he stuck with what we wanted to do, rather than him making up his own stuff.”
That was most evident during a dramatic victory over LSU in the championship game of the Cayman Islands Classic. On K-State’s final possession of the night Tang instructed Nowell to drain the clock, pass the ball to Keyontae Johnson in the corner and get out of the way.
Nowell did exactly what he was told, and the possession ended with a go-ahead bucket from Johnson.
“At the end of the game, when we called timeout, we said, ‘This is what we’re going to run,’” Tang said. “And he went out there and ran it. He didn’t frown his face. He knew what he needed to do to put our team in a situation to win the game, and it worked out.”
Still, Nowell has done much more than defer to teammates at important times this season.
He also led K-State to an overtime victory against Nevada with 29 points and 11 assists. Before that, he had nine points and 12 assists against Rhode Island. He is also shooting 42.2% from the field and 37% from three-point range.
His scoring is up. His assists are up. He is making more shots. His turnovers are down. He hasn’t attempted a single shot from Damian Lillard range.
One might think that transition was difficult for Nowell when you consider that Tang inherited him rather than recruiting him to K-State. But Nowell says it was easy for him to buy into Tang’s ways because of the winning culture he previously helped establish at Baylor as one of Scott Drew’s assistants.
Tang promised to build a NCAA Tournament team around Nowell, and Nowell vowed to lead K-State’s new roster to wins.
“I’m getting more comfortable with my teammates,” Nowell said. “I am just being more under control and more poised. Coach always talks about being simple. So I am trying to do simple better than everybody. I give a lot of credit to my coaching staff and my teammates for actually making shots.”
Nowell has been playing so well of late that he was named Big 12 Player of the Week on Monday.
He wants to continue his improvement when K-State heads to Butler for its second true road game of the season on Wednesday. This is what he has been working toward since he joined the Wildcats.
“I put in a lot of work this summer,” Nowell said. “I didn’t really have many days off. I would just end in the gym, working tirelessly on my shot and all my play-making and being under control.”