15 March 2024
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KSNT) – Kansas State men’s basketball, after a Thursday night loss to Iowa State, is tasked with doing one of the only things harder than winning Big 12 basketball games: Waiting.
The Wildcats can’t do much but hope and pray in the days leading up to selection Sunday. After Thursday’s quarterfinal defeat, most major outlets list K-State right on the verge of the bubble, with many of them showing Jerome Tang’s squad barely on the wrong side of it.
The second-year K-State head coach said most of the season that he wanted to win nine conference games to feel safe about getting a bid. Wednesday’s win against Texas put the ‘Cats at nine. However, he had also said before the Big 12 tournament that he’d feel more comfortable if they got two wins in KC.
Tang was asked, in Thursday’s postgame press conference, if his team deserves an NCAA tournament bid. He delivered a passionate, nearly three-minute answer, pleading his case and presenting the facts for why, he thinks, K-State has done enough to earn a spot.
He presented a number of metrics to make his point:
Five quad one wins, all against top-30 NET teams
Six wins against top-40 NET teams
Opponents have a combined ninth-best defense, 35th-best offense in the country
Only three losses to non-NCAA tournament teams
The NCAA describes NET as its “primary sorting tool for evaluating teams.” Read more on what NET is here.
“We didn’t play a powder puff schedule,” Tang said. “We have the number one strength of schedule of all the bubble teams right now.”
The Wildcats nine wins in what Tang calls, “the best league in the country,” are not the only reason his team deserves in, he claims.
He points out K-State is 1-0 against the SEC and 2-0 against the Big East.
“We didn’t duck anybody,” Tang said.
He feels the point differential in K-State’s wins is being overvalued.
“We won seven overtime games and for some reason that’s being held against us in the NET with the metrics,” Tang said. “I was told a long time ago, ‘Just win the games.’ Because we didn’t win by 30 or 40 against quad two or fewer teams that’s being held against us in the numbers of what the NET shows.”
He says no system or spreadsheet can measure the adversity his team faced in losing Nae’Qwan Tomlin, due to dismissal from the team, and Ques Glover, due to injury.
“We were missing two guys who could’ve started for us,” he said.
He says of all teams considered to be ‘on the bubble’ right now, only Texas A&M has more, or better, quad one wins.
“And [Texas A&M] has four quad four losses,” he said.
The Wildcats have one quad three loss and no quad four losses.
Tang also claims Miami, Providence and USC were all bigger and better teams at the point of meeting Kansas State.
“We have elite quad one wins, we have no bad losses,” Tang said. “I felt last night, when we won that game that game us our ninth Big 12 win that we were in the tournament.”
As for what his team will do in the meantime, Tang says there will be plenty of nervousness. He plans to call on his faith.
“We come up short a lot, in a lot of areas of life, I got this big God that fills the gap,” Tang said. “I talk to [my players] all the time about his grace and mercy, so that’s what I’m going to rely on. I’m telling you, I got this really great feeling on the inside and this joy that’s inside of me. I can’t explain it and you can’t understand it unless you live it. God’s done some amazing things in my life for me. My prayer is that he delivers it for these guys because they deserve a chance to play in tournament.”
The Selection Show starts at 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 17.