Kansas State men’s basketball coach Jerome Tang took his team’s latest loss as close to the heart as it gets and proceeded to call out his players in a major way.
Speaking with reporters after a 91-62 beatdown by Big 12 rival Cincinnati at home, a dejected Tang said:
“This was embarrassing,” he said. “These dudes do not deserve to wear this uniform. There will be very few of them in it next year.
“I’m embarrassed for the university, I’m embarrassed for our fans, our student section. It is just, ridiculous. We have practice at 6 am tomorrow morning and we will get this thing right. I have no answer, I have no words… Right now, I’m p—ed. This is… this is… yeah.”
Kansas State, which reached the Elite Eight during the 2022-23 season under Tang, is 10-14, 1-10 in the Big 12 and has lost five straight. Students have taken to wearing brown paper bags over their heads at home games.
The school is known for spending up to seven figures in NIL on top players. For this year, the school added Memphis transfer PJ Haggerty for “in the neighborhood of $2.5 million,” per Jeff Goodman.
Haggerty scored 24 points in the Cincinnati game and is averaging 23.3 on the season, but obviously the team is not succeeding.
“You can spend a lot of money and not have a very good team,” UConn coach Dan Hurley, speaking generally, said recently. “…You give the wrong people money they’ll be a worse version of themselves.”