Kansas State Wildcats hire top Baylor assistant as new men’s basketball coach

If you can’t beat one of your conference rivals on the basketball court, you might as well hire their top assistant coach.

That is exactly the line of thinking Kansas State athletics director Gene Taylor has followed while he was searching for someone new to lead the Wildcats over the past two weeks.

Jerome Tang, a 55-year old who has spent the past 19 seasons helping to turn Baylor into a national power, agreed on Monday to a six-year, $14.1 million contract with the Wildcats and will replace Bruce Weber on the sidelines at Bramlage Coliseum.

“I am beyond excited to be the next head basketball coach at Kansas State,” Tang said in a release. “Having the opportunity to build on a program with a rich basketball history at a prestigious university is truly a blessing. We look forward to bringing an exciting style of basketball to K-State while helping our student-athletes succeed on the court and in life. My family and I can’t wait to get to Manhattan and form deep relationships with our students, former players, alumni and Wildcat fans everywhere. We look forward to making the Octagon of Doom the best home court advantage in the country!”

K-State administrators, including Taylor, flew to Texas on Sunday to formally interview Tang and began working on a contract. They closed the deal on Monday morning. Tang will be introduced in a Thursday news conference at a time to be announced.

Tang’s contract will play him $2.1 million next season and his base salary will increase by $100,000 in each remaining year.

“As we conducted a national search to find our next head coach, we wanted to identify an individual who can lead our program to consistently high levels while maintaining the integrity that our program is known for,” Taylor said in a release. “When we first met with Jerome, he was very impressive, and that continued throughout the duration of our search.”

Tang was among the top replacement candidates from the beginning. It’s easy to understand why.

K-State would love nothing more than to emulate what Baylor has accomplished on the hardwood under Scott Drew and his former lead lieutenant. When Drew arrived in Waco, Texas in 2003 the program was in shambles. But he had Tang by his side as an assistant. Together, they slowly turned the Bears into the juggernaut they are today.

After once being viewed as an afterthought in Big 12 hoops, Baylor is now regularly challenging Kansas at the top of the conference standings. The Bears have not only become regulars in the NCAA Tournament, they have claimed a pair of league championships and won a national title.

If that weren’t impressive enough, they have also absolutely owned the Wildcats of late. K-State hasn’t beaten Baylor since 2019, losing seven in a row to the Bears by an average of 21.4 points.

Maybe hiring Tang will help the Wildcats begin to close that gap.

There are reasons to be hopeful. During his 19 years at Baylor, Tang spent the first 14 as one of Drew’s assistants and the past five as his associate head coach. Even though he has never served as head coach at the college level, outside of a 4-0 run as the interim head coach at Baylor, now seems like an ideal time for Tang to make the jump.

Veteran assistants have shined all across college basketball this season, with Tommy Lloyd (Arizona), Mark Adams (Texas Tech) and Hubert Davis (North Carolina) all guiding their teams beyond the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Drew said last week that Tang has been offered several head coaching jobs over the years, he just never thought they were the right fit for him. Until now.

“The good thing is he can be selective,” Drew said of Tang. “He’s never just taken something for money or because he wants to be a head coach. When he feels called to go somewhere, he’s going to go. And definitely it’ll be exciting for us.”

Tang’s first priority at K-State will be convincing the team’s top returning players to remain on the roster. Nijel Pack was a first-team All-Big 12 player this past season and Markquis Nowell was an honorable mention. Others, like Selton Miguel and Luke Kasubke have shown promise.

The Wildcats were on the NCAA Tournament bubble until they ended the season with six straight losses. There is a nice foundation on which a new coach can build. But he will need to manage the transfer portal before the start of the 2022-23 season.

Under Tang, K-State will look to return to the highs it experienced under Weber (five NCAA Tournaments, two shared Big 12 championships, one Elite Eight) while avoiding the lows (four losing seasons).

Consistency wasn’t much of a problem for Tang at Baylor. Once the Bears got rolling under Drew’s coaching staff, they never stopped.

Tang helped lead the Bears to a streak of 15-consecutive seasons with at least 18 wins. They reached the NCAA Tournament 10 times during that stretch, advancing to the Sweet 16 or further five different times. The last two seasons featured trophies.

Ten players from those seasons have gone on to play in the NBA. K-State fans probably remember their names well — Quincy Acy, Freddie Gillespie, Pierre Jackson, Cory Jefferson, Perry Jones III, Quincy Miller, Johnathan Motley, Royce O’Neale, Taurean Prince and Ekpe Udoh.

Tang helped piece together eight consensus top-25 recruiting classes with the Bears, including the highest-ranked class in program history at No. 4 nationally in 2021 with Kendall Brown, Langston Love and Jeremy Sochan.

After years of losing against him, K-State is hoping Tang can recreate that magic as a head coach in Manhattan.