Why Jerome Tang ripped team’s effort level after K-State lost to Bowling Green
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Jerome Tang condemned effort after 82-66 loss, saying players didn't deserve K-State.
- Defensive breakdowns and underperforming transfers put NCAA Tournament bid at risk.
- Tang ordered intensified practice and demanded toughness to fix defensive lapses.
Jerome Tang didn’t make any excuses after the Kansas State men’s basketball team suffered what some will consider the most embarrassing loss of his tenure Monday at Bramlage Coliseum.
Bowling Green crushed K-State by the score of 82-66. It was the first time the Falcons had defeated a power-conference opponent in 20 years. Tang was unable to hide his disappointment when it was over.
“We didn’t deserve to wear a K-State uniform tonight,” he said. “I would have walked out if I could have. I would have left with some of the fans.”
Tang was understandably angry with himself as the head coach and with his team. He said he was “pretty pissed off” and “ready to get to practice” during the opening statement of his postgame news conference.
Then he called out his team for not playing hard enough to win, especially on defense.
“That’s what happens when you don’t show up, and you don’t bring it,” Tang said. “You’re going to get beat. That’s what is going to happen. They can sit in the huddle and say, ‘We are going to turn it on.’ But that’s not how college basketball works right now. ... If somebody beats you with a great effort, and you just weren’t good enough that night, I can live with that. But when you don’t give a good effort, you don’t deserve to wear this jersey, man.
“You don’t deserve to have K-State on the front of it, because that’s not who we are. The people who wear this jersey, the people who graduate from this place, the people who support this place, they are grinders. They work hard. They get up early, and they stay up late. And they show up every time. That’s what they do. I’m so disappointed for our fans and the people who support us.”
It’s not a great sign that Tang has publicly apologized to K-State fans after each of the past two losses.
But the Wildcats weren’t competitive in either one.
Any goodwill that they built up with five straight wins at the start of the season is long gone. At 5-3, the Wildcats are already in jeopardy of missing the NCAA Tournament for the third straight year.
A blowout loss against Bowling Green is reason for concern. The Falcons raced to a 49-35 halftime lead and the Wildcats were unable to mount a serious comeback. David Castillo scored a team-high 22 points, but he didn’t get much help from his teammates.
The impact transfers that Tang brought in during the offseason all struggled. PJ Haggerty finished with 17 points, but Bowling Green outscored K-State by 21 points when he was on the floor. Nate Johnson was limited to four points. Abi Bashir only saw 22 minutes of action.
Touted European recruits Elias Rapieque, Andrej Kostic and Dorin Buca combined for no points and one rebound. To be fair, though, only Rapieque saw action — 7 minutes in the first half.
By comparison, Sam Towns led Bowling Green with 27 points and two of his teammates (Javon Campbell and Javon Ruffin) both scored 17.
K-State forward Taj Manning has been with Tang every step of the way since he was hired four seasons ago.
He responded with one word when he was asked what this team lacked at the moment: “toughness.”
Castillo agreed, before adding that the Wildcats have “a lot of work to do on defense.”
“We need to get better guarding one on one,” Manning said. “We’re just getting beat a lot of times off the dribble one on one, and it’s causing everybody else to rotate, and then now we’re running out at guys and that’s when teams get wide open shots.”
Tang said K-State was so poor on defense that it felt like Bowling Green was playing pop-a-shot at times without a single defender in the way.
“We don’t know how to sit down and guard the ball,” Tang said, “and keep it in front of us so that we don’t cause rotation and you don’t have to help. We have got to get better at that.”
K-State won without playing much defense early in the season, thanks to an offense that averaged nearly 100 points in its first five games. But scoring hasn’t come easily over the past two games.
The Wildcats only managed 69 points at Indiana. They followed that up with 66 against Bowling Green. When they don’t make shots or play defense, this is what happens.
Tang is tired of it.
“I’m going to make sure,” he said, “this doesn’t happen again.”