Kansas State head coach Jerome Tang: "We had more dudes than (Kentucky) did today"

Kansas State’s first-year head coach Jerome Tang wasn’t shy about why he thought his team was able to take down Kentucky on Sunday.

Despite being predicted to finish last in the Big 12 during the preseason, Tang got his tenure off to a blazing-hot start. Kansas State began the season 15-1 before battling through a deep and competitive conference schedule. The Wildcats earned a No. 3 seed in the 2023 NCAA Tournament, easily taking down No. 14 Montana State in the first round. The reward? A date with Kentucky in the Round of 32.

With some of the conference’s most talented players on his roster, Tang and company survived a tough challenge from UK, coming away with a 75-69 win after trailing for the majority of the game. It was another crushing end to the season for the Big Blue Nation, which still hasn’t seen a Final Four since 2015. It was yet another reason to believe that Kentucky just isn’t the high-level program it was during John Calipari’s early years in Lexington. The Gold Standard, while still one of the country’s best programs, has looked rather bronze as of late.

But mostly, Kentucky’s loss to Kansas State showed that the talent on this roster isn’t up to par with what it takes to make a deep run in the postseason. It’s been a while since a John Wall or Anthony Davis or Tyler Ulis or *insert player name here* walked through the doors of the Joe Craft Center. Kentucky had plenty of good players on the team this season, but fell short in a few areas.

Meanwhile, Coach Tang has built a team littered with fighters and — as Calipari likes to refer to them — “dagger throwers”. Kansas State hit its daggers on Sunday, while Kentucky hasn’t been able to do so for years now.

“We have a program that’s rich in tradition also,” Tang said after the win. “All those old dudes that played for Kentucky, they ain’t coming back. Tradition does not help you if you don’t get out there and play with some dudes. And we had more dudes than (Kentucky) did today. That’s what that was.”

Kansas State coach Jerome Tang after the win over Kentucky:
"We had more dudes than they did today." pic.twitter.com/499cd21uz7

— Dominique Yates (@RealDYates) March 19, 2023

It’s tough to argue with Tang, too. Kentucky did see Cason Wallace score 15 of his 21 points in the second half to help keep the ‘Cats alive while Oscar Tshiebwe unleash another impressive stat line of 25 points and 18 rebounds, but they were just two of the five players on the floor. Kentucky needed much, much more against a team as talented and hard-nosed as Kansas State.

Kentucky certainly has some “dudes”, but clearly not enough of them to reach the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend.

Chris Livingston was steady with 11 points and seven rebounds, but Antonio Reeves shot 1-15 from the floor and Jacob Toppin finished with just two points. CJ Fredrick, Adou Thiero, Daimion Collins, and Lance Ware combined for five points in 33 minutes spread between them. Sahvir Wheeler hasn’t played since Feb. 4 due to various injuries. Not enough production from top to bottom.

Compare those performances to that of Kansas State, which saw multiple players hit tough shots down the stretch that UK could not. This was not a case of “opposing team always gets hot against Kentucky” either. Kansas State missed its first 13 shots from beyond the arc before finding ways to get it done in the closing minutes. K-State finished off the win by making five of its last eight three-pointers.

That’s what good teams do. 5-foot-7 All-American Markquis Nowell hit dagger after dagger for Kansas State, scoring 23 of his 27 points in the second half. Fellow All-American Keyonate Johnson hit the toughest shot of the entire afternoon, a contested stepback triple right in Toppin’s eye that made it a five-point game with under 90 seconds left. Not even a full minute before that, Ishmal Massoud hit a timely three-pointer for Kansas State — his only make of the entire game — to put his squad ahead for good.

“Dudes. We got dudes. That’s what it takes,” Tang said in the postgame press conference. “I mean, people get all caught up in the coaching and all of that stuff. It’s dudes. You got to have players, and these dudes, they work. They’ve put in the time.”