By SAM LANCE
KANSAS CITY — Kansas State head coach Jerome Tang made his message clear after the Wildcats 76-57 loss to Iowa State in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament on Thursday night: Kansas State should be playing in March Madness.
“I have several reasons why,” Tang said on the podium postgame. “We have five Quad 1 wins. All five of our Quad 1 wins are against the top-30 in the NET. We have six wins against top-40 in the NET. The opponents that we played against in the non conference combined to have the ninth best defense in the country and the 35th best offense in the country. So we didn’t play a powder puff schedule.
Tang continued:
“We have the No. 1 strength of schedule of all the bubble teams right now. The No. 1 strength of schedule of all of them. We are 1-0 against the SEC and that was a true road game at LSU. We are 2-0 in the Big East and we played Providence on a neutral court, with Bryce Hopkins, their best player, and beat them. We played six power conference teams in the non conference and an American team, so we didn’t duck anybody.”
Tang also pointed out that the NET metrics have penalized the Wildcats for playing Quad 3 and 4 teams close in the non conference.
“I was told a long time ago just win the game,” Tang said. “What’s not taken into account is we were missing two guys who could have started for us, and we were trying to figure out who we were in November when those things happened.”
Another key factor Tang said the NCAA committee should take into account is when the Wildcats picked some of their key wins. When Kansas State beat Miami and USC on neutral floors in November, both teams were ranked in the top-25.
“We played the USC team that just beat Arizona the other day,” Tang said.
Coming into today’s game vs. Iowa State, ESPN’s Joe Lundari had Kansas State on the outside of the tournament as the “next four out”. That was behind teams like Michigan State, Mississippi State, Pitt, Virginia and St. John’s — who all won in today. The only bubble team who likely eliminated themselves today are Wake Forest. Villanova is also on the bubble and lost to No. 10 Marquette in overtime of the Big East Tournament, which could eliminate Kyle Neptune’s chances of making the tournament field.
It will be a long wait before Selection Sunday for the 19-14 Wildcats. Still, Tang believes Kansas State should be in.
“When I look at it, I see our body of work and I think about our Quad 1 wins,” Tang said. “We have elite Quad 1 wins. Three teams that were ranked top-10 in the country when we beat them. We beat Kansas full strength. We beat them with Kevin McCullar and Hunter Dickinson. And we beat Baylor, and we beat Iowa State. We have elite Quad 1 wins. We have no bad losses. So I feel like last night when we won that game that gave us our ninth Big 12 win, we were in the tournament.”
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