NCAA Basketball: 5 best coaching hires from 2022 offseason

5. Jerome Tang, Kansas State

Many of the best hires this offseason saw head coaches go from a mid-major to a major job. For Jerome Tang, it was major to major – just an elevation from assistant to head coach.

Tang has seen what success in the Big 12 looks like firsthand, serving as an assistant at Baylor for almost two decades prior to his Kansas State hire. Last year, he was an associate head coach for the title-winning Bears squad.

Tang actually has head coach experience, leading Heritage Christian Academy in Texas for a decade. He has also served as an interim coach for four games with the Bears, winning all four of them.

The former Baylor assistant also played a major role in some of Baylor’s best recruiting classes of all time. Last year’s class was the best in school history, for instance, including Kendall brown and Jeremy Sochan.

It was clear from the outpouring of tweets from renowned college basketball figures the kind of respect Tang commands in the sport. That alone is a positive sign for a program that had another respected figure in Bruce Weber but was ready for a change.

Tang will be tasked with spreading some of Baylor’s recent postseason magic on the Wildcats. Kansas State has made the NCAA Tournament as recently as 2019 and even went as far as the Elite Eight the year prior. It’s been almost 60 years since the Wildcats have made the Final Four, though.

His work will be cut out for him, as Kansas State was one of the worst teams in the Big 12 last season. He’s already lost at least one player, with sophomore Selton Miguel announcing his entry into the transfer portal after averaging 7.2 points per game a year ago.

There seems to be general consensus, however, that it was time for Tang to get a head coaching job. The fact that it’s coming in a conference he’s familiar with should lessen the learning curve.