K-State Q&A: My thoughts on new Wildcats men’s basketball coach Casey Alexander
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Calhoun has been frontrunner; talks may delay an announcement.
- Haggerty ranked second in scoring but got coaches' honorable mention.
- Wildcats had a rough season; Tang received F, season graded F from Robinett.
It’s time for another K-State Q&A.
A tumultuous basketball season is finally over. The Wildcats are expected to hire Casey Alexander of Belmont as their next men’s basketball coach in the very near future.
There are plenty of topics to cover.
With that in mind, let’s dive right into your questions. Thanks, as always, for providing them.
Who is going to be elected the new purple Pope (of K-State basketball) and when? -@catsfan20012002 via X.
White smoke has appeared at Bramlage Coliseum.
The Wildcats are set to hire Casey Alexander as their new men’s basketball coach.
That news will come as a surprise to many who monitored every turn of the K-State coaching search. But he is the guy.
Josh Schertz, of Saint Louis, was the school’s first choice. But he has a great gig at SLU and wasn’t ready to leave town for anything other than one of his dream jobs.
Jerrod Calhoun was another great option for the Wildcats. K-State athletic director Gene Taylor began negotiating a deal with the Utah State coach earlier this week, according to insiders, and he tried to get a deal done with him.
But Calhoun is currently trying to win the Mountain West Tournament. Next week, his team will be in the NCAA Tournament. After that, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh may come calling. He was in no rush to sign a deal with K-State, even though Bob Huggins (his former boss) recommended him for the job. The timing simply wasn’t right.
Creighton associate head coach Alan Huss was another strong candidate. But I was never sure where he stood in the pecking order. Some sources said he was a top candidate because of his ties to the region. Others said he was never truly in the mix.
So K-State pivoted to Casey Alexander on Thursday afternoon. He gave the Wildcats a thumbs up almost immediately. Taylor held a face-to-face interview with him earlier this month, and they picked up where they left off.
K-State is expected to announce the hire Friday.
What does that mean for the future of K-State basketball?
I’m cautiously optimistic about what Alexander can accomplish in Manhattan. Taylor said he wanted to hire a proven winner, someone with loads of head coaching experience. Well, Alexander fits that exact mold. He led Belmont to seven straight 20-win seasons and three regular-season conference championships.
Before that, he won at both Lipscomb and Stetson.
The guy clearly knows how to coach. He will bring respectability and a high floor, if not a high ceiling, with him to Manhattan.
His offenses are also elite. Belmont led the nation in 3-point shooting this past season, as the Bruins drained 41% of their 3-pointers. But the team was also strong in the paint, as it connected on 60.6% of its 2-pointers. Belmont ranked first nationally in effective field goal percentage.
The negative with Alexander is that he has only been to the NCAA Tournament one time. And that happened in 2018 at Lipscomb. This season, Drake bounced Belmont out of Arch Madness in the quarterfinals. Some will argue that means he can’t win big games. It’s certainly a negative on his resume. But if he wins 20 games per season at K-State, he will be in the NCAA Tournament regardless of what happens at the Big 12 Tournament.
Alexander is known as a good talent evaluator. Perhaps that will come in handy in Manhattan.
Jerome Tang wasted tons of NIL money over the past few seasons. Perhaps Alexander will spend it more wisely.
You never know what to expect from a coach who is making the leap from a mid-major to a power conference. We will have to wait and see how things work out with Alexander.
But he is the exact type of coach that Taylor wanted to hire.
Tang electrified the fan base at his introductory news conference and then won big in Year 1. Then everything fell apart until he was fired midway through year 4.
Alexander is kind of boring. Nothing about his background will have K-State fans throwing a parade in his honor this weekend. But he is a proven winner. Maybe that is what the Wildcats need right now.
PJ Haggerty only getting honorable mention from the Big 12 is insane. He ranked second in the conference in scoring! -@kstatefanfirst16 via X.
It is and it isn’t.
Big 12 coaches don’t usually vote for players on bad teams. Of the 20 individuals who earned spots on one of the all-conference teams, only one of them played for a team that finished with a losing record in league play — Cameron Carr from Baylor.
Arizona had four all-conference players. BYU and Iowa State had three. Houston, Kansas and Texas Tech all had two.
There wasn’t much room for anyone in the bottom half of the league standings.
I expected Haggerty to make the third team. He averaged 23.4 points per game, which ranked second in the Big 12 behind only AJ Dybantsa. That’s usually enough for more than honorable mention.
For what it’s worth, Haggerty was a second-team selection on the media’s All-Big 12 picks.
But I can see why Big 12 coaches might wonder how K-State was so bad if Haggerty was so good. He has been an elite scorer everywhere he has been in college basketball, but his teams have never been very good.
At K-State: He averaged 23.4 points and the Wildcats ranked 105th at Bart Torvik.
At Memphis: He averaged 21.7 points and the Tigers ranked 63rd at Torvik.
At Tulsa: He averaged 21.2 and the Golden Hurricane ranked 201st at Torvik.
There is more to the game than just scoring.
Let’s grade and review the men’s basketball season! What was your high and lowlight of the year? Who was your player of the year? Who was your most improved player? Grade Jerome Tang and Matthew Driscoll! Finally, grade the Cats on their season! -@bfullingt1 via X.
Season High: The best moment was, oddly, a loss. K-State losing by a single point to Nebraska in the championship game of the Hall of Fame Classic way back in November was the highlight of the season. The Wildcats pushed a top-25 team to the brink and really should have won the game. Still, K-State looked great that day and the team was off to a 5-1 start. I never thought this team was very good, but at that moment I thought it at least had a chance to contend for the NCAA Tournament.
Season Low: Take your pick. The losses to Bowling Green, Cincinnati, Iowa State and Kansas (x2) were all humiliating for the Wildcats.
Player of the Year: PJ Haggerty. At least he was a consistent scorer.
Most Improved Player: Taj Manning. It was fun to watch a kid who loves K-State get to be in the starting lineup.
Jerome Tang’s grade: F. Did he deserve to be fired “for cause?” Maybe. Maybe not. But there is no doubt that he had to go. This season was an unmitigated disaster. K-State basketball will be much better off without him.
Matthew Driscoll’s grade: C. The Wildcats played hard for him, and he won more Big 12 games this season than Tang. But his bizarre postgame comments ruined anything good that happened on the court. Coaching a Big 12 team should have been a career highlight for him. Not the miserable experience he described it to be.
K-State season grade: F. The Wildcats lost 20 games and dropped out of the top 100 at Bart Torvik. That is hard for a serious power-conference team to do.
Let’s talk women’s basketball. They had a great run at the Big 12 Tournament. Where do you think they’ll play next - WBIT or WNIT? And we’ve got a talented core group of freshmen. Will Mittie be able to keep them together for next season? -@DeniseDyke4 via X.
The K-State women’s basketball team intends to play in one of the consolation tournaments.
Which one? I have no idea.
Believe it or not, I’m no expert on the WBIT, WNIT and WBI.
These days, the secondary postseason tournaments come down to one thing: Who wants to play in them? The Wildcats ended the regular season on a hot streak, and they want to keep playing. So one of the tournaments will almost certainly invite them.
Jeff Mittie did a solid job this season. When you consider all the players he lost, going 18-17 and advancing to the semifinals of the Big 12 Tournament qualifies as an encouraging campaign.
The Wildcats were young this season. If they can bring their core back, they can build toward something bigger in the future. I think K-State will do everything it can to make that happen.
I’m a big fan of Collin Klein and am excited for his tenure as head coach to start. One thing I am concerned about is him calling plays. I know he has experience as an OC, but he doesn’t have any as a head coach. Will this work? What say you, Kellis? -@mrtroyh via X.
It can be difficult for some head coaches to call their own plays.
Collin Klein has spent the past few years running offenses from the press box on game days. Next season, he will be calling plays from the sideline while he is also technically in charge of the defense and special teams. That will be an adjustment for him.
But Klein seems ready for it.
He will have assistants helping him in the press box. He will have technology to look at on the sideline.
There are several head coaches who have won while calling their own plays.
Bottom line: Klein was one of the best offensive coordinators in the country. What sense would it make for him to hire a different OC? He deserves first crack at it. I think he will handle it just fine.
This story was originally published March 13, 2026 at 6:30 AM.