Kansas State University Athletics
Keep Stacking 1-0’s
Feb 16, 2024 | Men's Basketball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
Kansas State head coach Jerome Tang on Thursday wore a purple T-shirt to his weekly news conference. The T-shirt featured one word written in white block letters.
Consistency.
For Tang and the Wildcats, that word holds particularly special meaning. It is the essence of what they hope to achieve each day in the ultra-competitive Big 12 Conference.
"My message is let's go 1-0," Tang said. "Let's go 1-0 in our film session, in our practice, and in school, and we're going to come back this evening and watch more film, and I want to go 1-0 then. If we keep stacking those good 1-0's, then the results will take care of itself."
K-State, 15-9 overall and 5-6 in the Big 12, will seek consistency as it looks to build toward a memorable finish this Big 12 season. The Wildcats hope that begins when they meet TCU, 17-7 and 6-5, in Saturday's 11 a.m. tipoff at Bramlage Coliseum.
The Wildcats come off a 72-66 loss at No. 21 BYU and have dropped five of their last six contests. Their lone win during their recent stretch is a 75-70 overtime victory against No. 4 Kansas in Manhattan.
But K-State is 11-2 at Bramlage this season and has four home games remaining against TCU, BYU, West Virginia and Iowa State.
As for Tang's current message to his squad?
"For some reason, I don't think everybody really believes that we say it's a one-game season and it doesn't matter if we win or lose, we put it in a box and move on," Tang said. "That is how you have to — if my message changes throughout the season, all the stuff we said earlier didn't matter and the guys sense that panic.
"We're in a really good situation. We're where we thought we could be right now. We're 5-6, and we have four more home games, right? I feel like we're in a good spot. I really believe. I know people have crunched numbers and different things like that. I don't think it matters. Nine wins in this league, and you're going to go to the NCAA Tournament. And I think there are going to be some teams in our league that have seven or eight wins that will get in, also."
TCU has won three of the last five series meetings overall and three of the last four at Bramlage. K-State beat TCU, 82-61, the last time the teams met in Manhattan. This season, the Horned Frogs have won four of seven games away from Fort Worth. Six of the Horned Frogs' losses are in NET Quadrant 1 games.
TCU, which is receiving votes in this week's AP Top 25 poll, seeks three-straight trips to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. It comes off an 81-65 win against West Virginia. Prior to that, the Horned Frogs suffered a 77-66 home loss to Texas and a 71-59 loss at No. 14 Iowa State.
The Horned Frogs, who lead the Big 12 in scoring offense in conference games only with 77.1 points per game, also lead the Big 12 in shortest possession length at 15.7 seconds and leads the nation with 20.1 fastbreak points per game. They rank third in the Big 12 and 23rd nationally with 48.6% shooting from the floor.
Turnovers have been K-State' Achilles heel all season. The Wildcats rank 338th nationally with 15.0 turnovers per game. In the last six games, they've averaged 16.0 turnovers and have yielded 18.7 points per game off those miscues.
"They're great in transition," Tang said of the Horned Frogs. "They're turning people over more this year, and they get out and play fast. They're the third-oldest team in Division I basketball. They're never out of a game. They just keep grinding and grinding. They're tough to play against and tough to prepare for, and we can't have live-ball turnovers because that plays in their favor. They're a great team and a tournament team, and they're 6-5 in conference. That's just this league. We have to protect our home court and play really well to win."
Emanuel Miller leads TCU and ranks sixth in the Big 12 with 16.4 points per game and he has a team-leading 5.7 rebounds per game. He has scored in double figures in each of the last 12 games and has reached 20 points seven times this season.
Trevian Tennyson leads the Big 12 in 3-point percentage at 45.6 and is one of two players in the league who is averaging over 3.0 3s in Big 12 games at 3.1 per contest.
K-State features three of the Big 12's top 10 scorers. Cam Carter ranks seventh at 15.9 points per game, Tylor Perry ranks eighth at 14.8 and Arthur Kaluma is 10th at 14.5. Kaluma ranks fourth in the Big 12 with 7.2 rebounds per game.
The Wildcats, who had no midweek game this week, took two days off before resuming practice on Wednesday. Tang indicated that the Wildcats knocked off some rust on Wednesday and had a better practice on Thursday.
"It's been good for our staff, for our team, we have a lot of stuff accomplished that we need to do as a staff to continue building this program," Tang said of having a couple days off. "Yesterday was ugly because we had two and almost three days off, so we got the junk out yesterday and had a better practice today, and you expect that. Guys are as healthy as they could possibly be right now. Just looking forward to continuing to build this thing."
The Wildcats, taking their 1-0 approach, will look to become consistent against the Horned Frogs, then will look to go 1-0 the following day.
K-State has seven games remaining in its Big 12 schedule before the league tournament.
Asked if players are perhaps putting pressure on themselves in games, Tang replied, "This is college athletics, there is pressure, but I don't know if anybody puts any more pressure on our guys than they put on themselves. As a staff, nobody puts more pressure on us than we put on ourselves. It's just how do you use that pressure?
"Some pressure busts pipes and some pressure makes diamonds. We feel we have the kind of guys that the pressure is going to make diamonds."
Kansas State head coach Jerome Tang on Thursday wore a purple T-shirt to his weekly news conference. The T-shirt featured one word written in white block letters.
Consistency.
For Tang and the Wildcats, that word holds particularly special meaning. It is the essence of what they hope to achieve each day in the ultra-competitive Big 12 Conference.
"My message is let's go 1-0," Tang said. "Let's go 1-0 in our film session, in our practice, and in school, and we're going to come back this evening and watch more film, and I want to go 1-0 then. If we keep stacking those good 1-0's, then the results will take care of itself."
K-State, 15-9 overall and 5-6 in the Big 12, will seek consistency as it looks to build toward a memorable finish this Big 12 season. The Wildcats hope that begins when they meet TCU, 17-7 and 6-5, in Saturday's 11 a.m. tipoff at Bramlage Coliseum.
The Wildcats come off a 72-66 loss at No. 21 BYU and have dropped five of their last six contests. Their lone win during their recent stretch is a 75-70 overtime victory against No. 4 Kansas in Manhattan.
But K-State is 11-2 at Bramlage this season and has four home games remaining against TCU, BYU, West Virginia and Iowa State.
As for Tang's current message to his squad?
"For some reason, I don't think everybody really believes that we say it's a one-game season and it doesn't matter if we win or lose, we put it in a box and move on," Tang said. "That is how you have to — if my message changes throughout the season, all the stuff we said earlier didn't matter and the guys sense that panic.
"We're in a really good situation. We're where we thought we could be right now. We're 5-6, and we have four more home games, right? I feel like we're in a good spot. I really believe. I know people have crunched numbers and different things like that. I don't think it matters. Nine wins in this league, and you're going to go to the NCAA Tournament. And I think there are going to be some teams in our league that have seven or eight wins that will get in, also."
TCU has won three of the last five series meetings overall and three of the last four at Bramlage. K-State beat TCU, 82-61, the last time the teams met in Manhattan. This season, the Horned Frogs have won four of seven games away from Fort Worth. Six of the Horned Frogs' losses are in NET Quadrant 1 games.
TCU, which is receiving votes in this week's AP Top 25 poll, seeks three-straight trips to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. It comes off an 81-65 win against West Virginia. Prior to that, the Horned Frogs suffered a 77-66 home loss to Texas and a 71-59 loss at No. 14 Iowa State.
The Horned Frogs, who lead the Big 12 in scoring offense in conference games only with 77.1 points per game, also lead the Big 12 in shortest possession length at 15.7 seconds and leads the nation with 20.1 fastbreak points per game. They rank third in the Big 12 and 23rd nationally with 48.6% shooting from the floor.
Turnovers have been K-State' Achilles heel all season. The Wildcats rank 338th nationally with 15.0 turnovers per game. In the last six games, they've averaged 16.0 turnovers and have yielded 18.7 points per game off those miscues.
"They're great in transition," Tang said of the Horned Frogs. "They're turning people over more this year, and they get out and play fast. They're the third-oldest team in Division I basketball. They're never out of a game. They just keep grinding and grinding. They're tough to play against and tough to prepare for, and we can't have live-ball turnovers because that plays in their favor. They're a great team and a tournament team, and they're 6-5 in conference. That's just this league. We have to protect our home court and play really well to win."
Emanuel Miller leads TCU and ranks sixth in the Big 12 with 16.4 points per game and he has a team-leading 5.7 rebounds per game. He has scored in double figures in each of the last 12 games and has reached 20 points seven times this season.
Trevian Tennyson leads the Big 12 in 3-point percentage at 45.6 and is one of two players in the league who is averaging over 3.0 3s in Big 12 games at 3.1 per contest.
K-State features three of the Big 12's top 10 scorers. Cam Carter ranks seventh at 15.9 points per game, Tylor Perry ranks eighth at 14.8 and Arthur Kaluma is 10th at 14.5. Kaluma ranks fourth in the Big 12 with 7.2 rebounds per game.
The Wildcats, who had no midweek game this week, took two days off before resuming practice on Wednesday. Tang indicated that the Wildcats knocked off some rust on Wednesday and had a better practice on Thursday.
"It's been good for our staff, for our team, we have a lot of stuff accomplished that we need to do as a staff to continue building this program," Tang said of having a couple days off. "Yesterday was ugly because we had two and almost three days off, so we got the junk out yesterday and had a better practice today, and you expect that. Guys are as healthy as they could possibly be right now. Just looking forward to continuing to build this thing."
The Wildcats, taking their 1-0 approach, will look to become consistent against the Horned Frogs, then will look to go 1-0 the following day.
K-State has seven games remaining in its Big 12 schedule before the league tournament.
Asked if players are perhaps putting pressure on themselves in games, Tang replied, "This is college athletics, there is pressure, but I don't know if anybody puts any more pressure on our guys than they put on themselves. As a staff, nobody puts more pressure on us than we put on ourselves. It's just how do you use that pressure?
"Some pressure busts pipes and some pressure makes diamonds. We feel we have the kind of guys that the pressure is going to make diamonds."
Players Mentioned
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