Jerome Tang wants to upgrade Kansas State’s basketball schedule in future seasons
There are plenty of intriguing games against quality teams on Kansas State’s basketball schedule this season.
Fans just have to wait until Big 12 play begins to watch most of them.
The Wildcats won’t face a taxing nonconference slate in Jerome Tang’s first year on the job. They will play 13 games against teams outside of the Big 12 and none of them will come against teams currently ranked inside the top 50 of Ken Pomeroy’s ratings database. Overall, K-State’s nonconference schedule ranks 176th nationally in terms of difficulty.
Former coach Bruce Weber assembled a schedule that would allow the Wildcats to pile up wins, with neutral-court games against Nevada, LSU and Nebraska standing out as the most challenging. More attractive games against Butler and Florida were added via conference challenges.
Tang has a different vision for future seasons.
“With the transfer portal, we have a chance to keep our roster in a way that we have both experience and talent,” Tang said. “So I want to play some really good Power Five teams at home, not just at neutral sites. I would like to schedule some home-and-homes with some (elite) teams so that our fans here get to see a really good team in the nonconference come in.”
Tang wasn’t able to make many changes to K-State’s schedule this season. Twelve of the 13 games were already on the books when he was hired. The lone matchup he arranged was a road game against California, which means the Golden Bears will make a return trip to Bramlage Coliseum in the future. Nebraska and Wichita State are also on future schedules.
That Cal game turned out to be a total dud, as the Golden Bears are off to an 0-10 start this season. But there was no way Tang could have known they would be the worst team in the Pac-12. He scheduled the game to try and give K-State a road game that would prepare them for Big 12 play.
When Tang was an assistant coach at Baylor, the Bears lined up home-and-home series with teams like Arizona, Gonzaga and Oregon.
Fans can expect more games like that in upcoming seasons now that Tang is at K-State. Whatever it takes to boost K-State’s chances of reaching the NCAA Tournament.
“We’ve had six or seven or more teams make the NCAA Tournament in our league every year for the last however many years,” Tang said. “The reason is because we’ve all done so well in the nonconference. We beat up on the other leagues.
“So that’s one of the things that we want to do, is play teams from other conferences and show that the Big 12 is the best basketball conference in the country. That way, on Selection Sunday, we get the benefit of the doubt.”