Dancing on to NYC
Mar 20, 2023 | Men's Basketball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
He said that the whole year has been a dream come true. But this moment just hit a little bit different. Kansas State head coach Jerome Tang stood before a throng of reporters outside the Wildcats' locker room in his lavender quarter-zip and nursing a can of Coca-Cola in his right hand in the innards of Greensboro Coliseum — at the moment the most popular man in the arena, and perhaps the odds-on favorite for National Coach of the Year in college basketball.
Three-hundred and sixty-three days after his hiring on March 21, 2022 and when he proclaimed that he intended on elevating the K-State program, the 56-year-old immigrant from San Fernando, Trinidad, just took his first Division I team to one of the best NCAA Tournament victories in K-State history, a 75-69 win over sixth-seed Kentucky, sending the tougher Wildcat team on Sunday to the Sweet 16 in New York City.
Kentucky entered 32-9 in the NCAA Tournament under John Calipari with eight Sweet 16s, seven Elite Eights, and four Final Fours, but a reporter's question about how it felt to dethrone a blue-blood program caused Tang pause.
"You know," Tang said, "we have a program that's rich in tradition, also. All those old dudes that played for Kentucky, they aren't coming back. Tradition does not help you if you don't get out there on the floor and play with some dudes.
"We had more dudes than they did today."
And that's why No. 3-seed K-State, 25-9, is headed to play seventh-seed Michigan State, 21-12, in Madison Square Garden for the Sweet 16.
K-State has dudes.
A K-State fan in the purple section at Greensboro Coliseum waved a white t-shirt that read, "HEART OVER HEIGHT" — the calling card for one of the nation's most electrifying players, point guard Markquis Nowell, the third-team All-American who poured in 27 points, drained three key 3-pointers in the second half, added nine assists and three steals in nearly 40 minutes in one of the top individual NCAA Tournament performances by a player in K-State history. Nowell, a native of Harlem, New York, dazzled the national TV audience with a bevy of smooth passes at breakneck speed — a couple resulting in dunks, and others resulting in a 3-pointers by awaiting teammates.
The 5-foot-7, 160-pound Nowell simply wouldn't be stopped, not when K-State trailed by eight points midway through the first half, and not when K-State came off a 29-26 halftime lead only to see it slip away, and not when he helped build the Wildcats' lead to seven points with under a minute to go.
"I was just in attack mode the second half because I saw how they were playing me," said Nowell, who shot 7-of-14 from the floor, including 3-of-8 on 3-pointers and 10-of-11 from the foul line. "They were playing my pass because I dropped a lot of dimes in the first half. I just tried for my own shot a little bit more and to be a little bit more aggressive — and I just wanted to go to New York."
Next to Nowell in the postgame interview room sat senior-transfer Keyontae Johnson and junior forward Ismael Massoud — both of whom made crucial long-range bombs in the final 2 minutes, 20 seconds. Massoud drained a 3-pointer from in front of the K-State bench for a 64-62 lead, then Johnson drained one of his own for a 67-62 advantage with 91 seconds on the clock, sending some of the 16,517 mostly-blue fans heading toward the exits.
"We got dudes," Tang said. "That's what it takes. People get caught up in the coaching and stuff, but it's dudes — you have to have players, and they work and put in the time. We talked about it before this game that we're going to trust our work. We won really good games against other really good teams in really tough environments before, so we were prepared for this.
"I expected them to play great."
And they played great.
All-American Oscar Tshiebwe, the 6-foot-9, 260-pounder, had 25 points and 18 rebounds but fell largely silent over the final five minutes. Star guard Cason Wallace had 21 points and four assists but also suffered five turnovers against a K-State defense that forced Kentucky into 16 turnovers.
"We knew Oscar was going to be Oscar," Tang said. "The stats showed that in wins and losses he put up the same numbers in scoring and rebounding, so our job was to stop everybody else."
Kentucky had 19 offensive rebounds but scored just 17 second-chance points. K-State at one point had 11 personal fouls to Kentucky's four. K-State didn't hit its first 3-pointer until less than 15 minutes remained in the game.
But K-State outshot Kentucky 48.1% to 41.3% from the floor, and was the grittier and tougher team. And it starts with its point guard who is going home to the Big Apple.
"Tim Floyd said when you get a point guard, get one from one of the big cities because they take pride in big-city toughness like Chicago, New York and New Orleans," Tang said. "That 'You don't know where I'm from,' that's Markquis all the time: 'I'm from New York.' That kind of toughness and grit, you love that."
As the final horn sounded on K-State's Sweet 16 berth, the Wildcats celebrated with family and friends near the edge of the stands, Tang and Nowell appeared on postgame TV, and then Tang found K-State athletic director Gene Taylor for a warm extended embrace near midcourt. It was Taylor who brought Tang to Manhattan, less than five years after bringing football head coach Chris Klieman to the Little Apple. Klieman guided K-State to the 2022 Big 12 Championship and three months later Tang has the Wildcats in the Regional Semifinals.
"I actually watched Gene and Coach Klieman hug after a win I was watching on TV and you could tell that there was this love and appreciation for each other with the hug and I was like, 'Man, I'm going to get a hug like that,'" Tang said. "I absolutely love him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate him taking a chance on me. Words can't express it."
Words escaped Massoud, another Harlem native, as he stood near midcourt in happy tears, thinking back to nearly a year ago, when he and Nowell, the only two returning players from a squad that went 14-17, began the process of helping bring players to Manhattan — and the storybook tale that followed.
"Just love and happiness and emotion," Massoud said. "It took a lot for us to get here. We were picked last (in the Big 12 preseason) and all the workouts in the summer, for me to have that moment just meant a lot, because you never know when you'll have another opportunity for this.
"For me to play my role and help us to accomplish our goals, it was just so much emotion that I just couldn't contain other than crying."
K-State has come so far so fast that it likely elicited emotion from K-State Nation as well. This was the farthest K-State has gone in a NCAA Tournament since it beat Kentucky in the Sweet 16 in 2018 — previously the Wildcats' last tournament win.
"I had faith that if I got at least five players, I don't care who it is, that we were going to make March Madness and do something special," Nowell said.
Asked whether he understood that he was a 5-foot-7 guard who took down Kentucky to return home to New York City for a Sweet 16 appearance, Nowell replied, "It hasn't hit me yet and I kind of don't want it to because I don't want to lose the hunger that I have a passion I play with."
"This is about my team," he continued. "We accomplished this. I didn't accomplish this by myself. Everybody played huge for us, and the coaching staff did great, and I'm just proud of everybody in the locker room."
Johnson, a third-team All-American, had 13 points, four rebounds and three assists, yet found difficulty finding his touch until the second half. That's when Nowell stepped in to help out his star teammate.
"I just have the right guys around me," Johnson said. "Quis challenged me during the game, Ish knocked down the big 3, and it just shows how much we loved each other and how much freedom we have and how much confidence we have in each other."
That confidence spread throughout. Nae'Qwan Tomlin scored 12 key points and added six rebounds and four blocks. Desi Sills played through injury and delivered 12 points as well. It seemed K-State was clicking at exactly all the right moments.
"We were the toughest team out there," Nowell said. "It was a 40-minute battle, but we just ran to the fight."
And almost immediately, the Wildcats flew back to Manhattan Regional Airport, thick with K-State fans awaiting their arrival.
A sign at the airport terminal read: "KEEP ON DANCING."
These incredible Wildcats, behind their energetic first-year head coach and electric point guard, don't plan to stop dancing anytime soon.
He said that the whole year has been a dream come true. But this moment just hit a little bit different. Kansas State head coach Jerome Tang stood before a throng of reporters outside the Wildcats' locker room in his lavender quarter-zip and nursing a can of Coca-Cola in his right hand in the innards of Greensboro Coliseum — at the moment the most popular man in the arena, and perhaps the odds-on favorite for National Coach of the Year in college basketball.
Three-hundred and sixty-three days after his hiring on March 21, 2022 and when he proclaimed that he intended on elevating the K-State program, the 56-year-old immigrant from San Fernando, Trinidad, just took his first Division I team to one of the best NCAA Tournament victories in K-State history, a 75-69 win over sixth-seed Kentucky, sending the tougher Wildcat team on Sunday to the Sweet 16 in New York City.
Kentucky entered 32-9 in the NCAA Tournament under John Calipari with eight Sweet 16s, seven Elite Eights, and four Final Fours, but a reporter's question about how it felt to dethrone a blue-blood program caused Tang pause.
"You know," Tang said, "we have a program that's rich in tradition, also. All those old dudes that played for Kentucky, they aren't coming back. Tradition does not help you if you don't get out there on the floor and play with some dudes.
"We had more dudes than they did today."
And that's why No. 3-seed K-State, 25-9, is headed to play seventh-seed Michigan State, 21-12, in Madison Square Garden for the Sweet 16.
K-State has dudes.
A K-State fan in the purple section at Greensboro Coliseum waved a white t-shirt that read, "HEART OVER HEIGHT" — the calling card for one of the nation's most electrifying players, point guard Markquis Nowell, the third-team All-American who poured in 27 points, drained three key 3-pointers in the second half, added nine assists and three steals in nearly 40 minutes in one of the top individual NCAA Tournament performances by a player in K-State history. Nowell, a native of Harlem, New York, dazzled the national TV audience with a bevy of smooth passes at breakneck speed — a couple resulting in dunks, and others resulting in a 3-pointers by awaiting teammates.
The 5-foot-7, 160-pound Nowell simply wouldn't be stopped, not when K-State trailed by eight points midway through the first half, and not when K-State came off a 29-26 halftime lead only to see it slip away, and not when he helped build the Wildcats' lead to seven points with under a minute to go.
"I was just in attack mode the second half because I saw how they were playing me," said Nowell, who shot 7-of-14 from the floor, including 3-of-8 on 3-pointers and 10-of-11 from the foul line. "They were playing my pass because I dropped a lot of dimes in the first half. I just tried for my own shot a little bit more and to be a little bit more aggressive — and I just wanted to go to New York."
Next to Nowell in the postgame interview room sat senior-transfer Keyontae Johnson and junior forward Ismael Massoud — both of whom made crucial long-range bombs in the final 2 minutes, 20 seconds. Massoud drained a 3-pointer from in front of the K-State bench for a 64-62 lead, then Johnson drained one of his own for a 67-62 advantage with 91 seconds on the clock, sending some of the 16,517 mostly-blue fans heading toward the exits.
"We got dudes," Tang said. "That's what it takes. People get caught up in the coaching and stuff, but it's dudes — you have to have players, and they work and put in the time. We talked about it before this game that we're going to trust our work. We won really good games against other really good teams in really tough environments before, so we were prepared for this.
"I expected them to play great."
And they played great.
All-American Oscar Tshiebwe, the 6-foot-9, 260-pounder, had 25 points and 18 rebounds but fell largely silent over the final five minutes. Star guard Cason Wallace had 21 points and four assists but also suffered five turnovers against a K-State defense that forced Kentucky into 16 turnovers.
"We knew Oscar was going to be Oscar," Tang said. "The stats showed that in wins and losses he put up the same numbers in scoring and rebounding, so our job was to stop everybody else."
Kentucky had 19 offensive rebounds but scored just 17 second-chance points. K-State at one point had 11 personal fouls to Kentucky's four. K-State didn't hit its first 3-pointer until less than 15 minutes remained in the game.
But K-State outshot Kentucky 48.1% to 41.3% from the floor, and was the grittier and tougher team. And it starts with its point guard who is going home to the Big Apple.
"Tim Floyd said when you get a point guard, get one from one of the big cities because they take pride in big-city toughness like Chicago, New York and New Orleans," Tang said. "That 'You don't know where I'm from,' that's Markquis all the time: 'I'm from New York.' That kind of toughness and grit, you love that."
As the final horn sounded on K-State's Sweet 16 berth, the Wildcats celebrated with family and friends near the edge of the stands, Tang and Nowell appeared on postgame TV, and then Tang found K-State athletic director Gene Taylor for a warm extended embrace near midcourt. It was Taylor who brought Tang to Manhattan, less than five years after bringing football head coach Chris Klieman to the Little Apple. Klieman guided K-State to the 2022 Big 12 Championship and three months later Tang has the Wildcats in the Regional Semifinals.
"I actually watched Gene and Coach Klieman hug after a win I was watching on TV and you could tell that there was this love and appreciation for each other with the hug and I was like, 'Man, I'm going to get a hug like that,'" Tang said. "I absolutely love him. I can't tell you how much I appreciate him taking a chance on me. Words can't express it."
Words escaped Massoud, another Harlem native, as he stood near midcourt in happy tears, thinking back to nearly a year ago, when he and Nowell, the only two returning players from a squad that went 14-17, began the process of helping bring players to Manhattan — and the storybook tale that followed.
"Just love and happiness and emotion," Massoud said. "It took a lot for us to get here. We were picked last (in the Big 12 preseason) and all the workouts in the summer, for me to have that moment just meant a lot, because you never know when you'll have another opportunity for this.
"For me to play my role and help us to accomplish our goals, it was just so much emotion that I just couldn't contain other than crying."
K-State has come so far so fast that it likely elicited emotion from K-State Nation as well. This was the farthest K-State has gone in a NCAA Tournament since it beat Kentucky in the Sweet 16 in 2018 — previously the Wildcats' last tournament win.
"I had faith that if I got at least five players, I don't care who it is, that we were going to make March Madness and do something special," Nowell said.
Asked whether he understood that he was a 5-foot-7 guard who took down Kentucky to return home to New York City for a Sweet 16 appearance, Nowell replied, "It hasn't hit me yet and I kind of don't want it to because I don't want to lose the hunger that I have a passion I play with."
"This is about my team," he continued. "We accomplished this. I didn't accomplish this by myself. Everybody played huge for us, and the coaching staff did great, and I'm just proud of everybody in the locker room."
Johnson, a third-team All-American, had 13 points, four rebounds and three assists, yet found difficulty finding his touch until the second half. That's when Nowell stepped in to help out his star teammate.
"I just have the right guys around me," Johnson said. "Quis challenged me during the game, Ish knocked down the big 3, and it just shows how much we loved each other and how much freedom we have and how much confidence we have in each other."
That confidence spread throughout. Nae'Qwan Tomlin scored 12 key points and added six rebounds and four blocks. Desi Sills played through injury and delivered 12 points as well. It seemed K-State was clicking at exactly all the right moments.
"We were the toughest team out there," Nowell said. "It was a 40-minute battle, but we just ran to the fight."
And almost immediately, the Wildcats flew back to Manhattan Regional Airport, thick with K-State fans awaiting their arrival.
A sign at the airport terminal read: "KEEP ON DANCING."
These incredible Wildcats, behind their energetic first-year head coach and electric point guard, don't plan to stop dancing anytime soon.
Players Mentioned
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