Jerome Tang saw enough from the Kansas State men’s basketball team during its 13 nonconference games to feel confident about what the Wildcats can accomplish when league play begins later this week.
“We have a Big 12 roster,” the K-State head coach said.
Still, the fourth-year head coach doesn’t want to make any predictions on how many games K-State (9-4) will win the rest of the way. The Wildcats have been inconsistent this season, playing well enough to beat teams like California and Creighton but also playing poorly enough to lose to a mid-major opponent like Bowling Green.
Even Tang is curious to find out how the Wildcats handle the grind of 18 straight games against Big 12 opponents.
“I think we can beat anybody in the Big 12, but I think anybody in the Big 12 can beat us,” Tang said. “We could play really well these first six games and be 1-5 or be 5-1. That’s just how good this league is. There are six teams that are ranked, there are four teams that are getting votes. So there are 10 teams that could be in the top 25. It’s not just the best league in the country, it’s the deepest league in the country.
“Do I feel like we put together a roster that’s going to give us an opportunity to win games in the Big 12? Yes. How many of those games will be wins? They’ll all come down to one or two possessions, for the most part. But I like our group, and I like how we’ve improved from the beginning of the year till now.”
The challenge begins at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, when K-State plays host to No. 10 BYU on the opening day of Big 12 basketball action.
That will be the first of many difficult games on the schedule for the Wildcats: Seven teams that K-State will play rank inside the top 50 of Bart Torvik’s national basketball database with Houston, Arizona, Iowa State, Kansas, BYU and Texas Tech all residing inside the top 25.
K-State checks in at No. 74, a number that ranks 12th in the conference.
The Wildcats will play two challenging games right away. After hosting a top 10 team on Saturday, K-State will hit the road for a game at No. 1 Arizona on Jan. 7.
Tang referenced the first six games. Here’s what that slate looks like: BYU, at Arizona, at Arizona State, UCF, at Oklahoma State and then Utah.
It should be easy to motivate K-State’s players heading into that stretch of games.
“This is the best basketball conference in college basketball,” K-State guard PJ Haggerty said. “I’m looking forward to going in every night and competing and trying to come out with wins.”
Nate Johnson knows where K-State needs to improve before the games truly start to matter.
“We are going to be focusing on the same thing we’ve been focusing on here lately, just making sure we get stops,” Johnson said, “because in the Big 12 the margin of winning is very, very small. As long as we play defense, we should be all right.”
