On a night when some Kansas State students showed up wearing paper bags on their heads, Kansas State hit a new low in a 91-62 loss to Cincinnati on Wednesday night. Wildcats coach Jerome Tang called the loss “embarrassing” and put the blame on his players, expressing his displeasure with the effort in the team’s 10th loss in 11 games.
“These dudes do not deserve to wear this uniform,” Tang said. “There will be very few of them in it next year. I’m embarrassed for the university, and I’m embarrassed for our fans, our student section. It is just ridiculous. We’ve got practice at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning, and we will get this thing right. I have no answer and no words. … Right now, I’m like pissed.”
After losing to Cincinnati 91–62 on Wednesday night, Kansas State HC Jerome Tang didn’t hold back. pic.twitter.com/TnvNIAAt6d
— FOX College Hoops (@CBBonFOX) February 12, 2026
It has been a bad turn for Tang’s program in his fourth season in Manhattan. K-State is 10-14 overall and tied for last place in the Big 12 at 1-10, with the one win over fellow last-place team Utah.
The Tang tenure opened with such promise, winning 26 games and making an Elite Eight in 2022-23. Tang was optimistic for year two when he started to dream big, putting the 2024 Phoenix Final Four logo on the padding of the two primary baskets in K-State’s practice facility that year with the goal of getting there. But before the season, star forward Nae’Qwan Tomlin, who is now with the Cleveland Cavaliers, was dismissed from the team after a disorderly conduct charge that fall following a bar fight. Tomlin transferred to Memphis and played the second semester for the Tigers, while K-State failed to make the NCAA Tournament and went to the NIT.
Over the last two years, Tang has struggled to build a winner despite a healthy NIL budget. The Wildcats finished in the middle of the pack of the league last year — a 9-11 conference record — after investing heavily in the frontcourt, signing Coleman Hawkins (from Illinois), Ugonna Onyenso (Kentucky) and Achor Achor (Samford). The latter two were mostly non-factors, while Hawkins faced scrutiny for not playing to his lofty NIL package. But while it was a down year, K-State nearly played its way onto the bubble after starting 1-6 in the Big 12 by winning six straight games. The Cats were quickly off the bubble when they followed that streak with a four-game losing streak.
Tang turned his attention last offseason to building around shooting after hiring former North Florida coach Matthew Driscoll to run his offense. Driscoll’s teams at North Florida played fast and shot a lot of 3s. K-State’s two biggest splurges were for PJ Haggerty, a second-team All-American at Memphis last season, and Andrej Kostic, a sharpshooting Serbian wing believed to be one of the more expensive international recruits from the last cycle. Haggerty has produced (23.3 points per game), while Kostic has averaged just 4.3 points in 12.8 minutes per game.
The Wildcats have shot well from 3 (36.6 percent), but after finishing in the top 40 in adjusted defense in each of Tang’s first three years, they’re 149th this season and allowing 117.6 points per 100 possessions in Big 12 play.
Tang said recently his guys could “guard when we want to” and it was all about their “care factor,” which clearly was called into question Wednesday on plays like one in the second half, when two K-State players failed to box out free-throw shooter Baba Miller and allowed him to put back a miss for an uncontested dunk.
Wednesday was K-State’s third straight home loss by 20 or more points.
K-State had never lost 3 home games by 20 or more points in a single season from the start of the Tom Asbury era
(1995-96) through the 2024-25 season. Jerome Tang has lost 3 straight home games by 20-plus points (combined 87 points).— Cole Manbeck (@Cole_Manbeck) February 12, 2026
K-State has been more competitive on the road lately — a 5-point loss at West Virginia and 2-point loss this past Saturday at TCU — and Tang, who said he’d take two questions after Wednesday’s loss, was asked if he had an explanation for the difference between his team at home and one the road. He said he’s considered having his team stay in a hotel before home games, but then went back to the same tune of his opening statement.
“None of that crap matters,” he said. “These dudes gotta have some pride, man. It means something to wear a K-State uniform. It means something to put on this purple, man. Like everything this university is about and all it’s been about, why I love this place, they don’t love this place, so they don’t deserve to be here.”
Tang’s tone was very different from 10 days earlier, when, following a 95-61 loss to Iowa State, he said he loved and was proud of his guys. A source briefed on the situation said Kansas State was dealing with a sensitive, private issue with one of its players, which had nothing to do with the law, prior to the Iowa State game.
After the Iowa State loss, Tang was asked for the most disappointing thing from his view of the effort and game, and he said he wasn’t disappointed at all.
“Because I’m with these dudes every single day, and I know what they’re going through and y’all don’t,” Tang said. “And so I was proud of our guys, especially in the second half.”
Tang declined to elaborate that day on what his guys were going through and took the blame for not having a good enough game plan. He was asked then if he had a message for the fans.
“This is not a message for the fans,” he said. “This is a message for my players. I love these guys, right? They work really, really hard. And this is the team, they chose to come play for this university for this coaching staff. I love these dudes, and if you saw them the last two days of practice, you’d had said, ‘man, OK, they’re ready.’ The problem is Iowa State is just better, right? And sometimes you guys like want there to be some thing that we could have done differently. Ya know, they’re just better than we are right now. And so you chalk it up to them, and you tell your guys that you’re proud of them for continuing to fight and not quit.”
K-State is playing without two starters. Second-leading scorer Abdi Bashir, who had surgery to repair a stress fracture in his foot, has missed the last six games, and freshman power forward Elias Rapieque has missed the last eight games with an undisclosed injury. Kostic has also missed the last two games with an ankle injury, and backup big man Mobi Ikegwuruka has been away from the team for an undisclosed reason.
Tang has mostly strayed away from blaming his players, saying recently after a loss to West Virginia that he hadn’t figured out how to build a sustainably successful program “because they keep changing the rules on me.” That was in response to the G League players being allowed to return to college. “If they were to give me consistent rules, then I know how to move forward and operate,” he said at the time. “And I’m going to figure it out, because I got a staff, we’re relentless. We don’t stop.”
Whether Tang will be given that chance may seem up in the air, but the source said athletic director Gene Taylor has told Tang he’s going to get at least one more season. Tang is signed through the 2029-30 season, and his buyout is $18.7 million if he’s fired before April 30.
For the second and final question on Wednesday night, Tang was asked about the students showing up with bags on their heads.
“Yeah,” Tang said. “I’d wear a paper bag too if I was them.”