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- Athletic director Gene Taylor fired Jerome Tang ‘for cause’ over remarks about players.
- Tang compiled 71-57 record after Elite Eight debut; K‑State faces 3rd straight NCAA miss.
- Taylor named Matthew Driscoll interim coach and urged the roster to finish strong.
Manhattan
Gene Taylor decided to make a coaching change while the Kansas State men’s basketball team was playing a hard-fought game at Houston on Saturday afternoon.
Not because of the result (Houston won 78-64) but because the K-State athletic director was still upset with head coach Jerome Tang for the viral comments he made earlier in the week about players not deserving to wear purple uniforms after a humiliating 91-62 home loss to Cincinnati.
Those comments were a final straw, of sorts, that led Taylor to relieve Tang of his duties “for cause” on Sunday in Manhattan.
“His comments about the student-athletes,” Taylor said, “and the negative reaction to those comments from a lot of sources, both nationally and locally, is where I thought we needed to make this decision. … What he said about the student athletes really concerned me.”
Taylor was asked why Tang was allowed to coach against Houston if his comments after a loss to Cincinnati were the reason for his firing.
He answered by saying that he has been out of town, and he needed to get approval from university president Richard Linton before he officially terminated Tang as coach.
Nevertheless, it was an astonishing turn of events.
Taylor had praised Tang at seemingly every opportunity during his first three years with the Wildcats. Just a few months ago, he bragged about hiring a great first-time head coach in Tang before he hired Collin Klein to lead the football team.
Tang spent nearly four seasons in charge of the K-State men’s basketball team. He had an overall record of 71-57.
He was hired to replace Bruce Weber in 2022 and found immediate success in Year 1. He led the Wildcats to 26 victories and a trip to the Elite Eight that season.
The Wildcats rewarded Tang with a pair of contract extensions early in his tenure, which raised his current salary to $3.6 million and buyout to $18.7 million. The latter figure will be in dispute with Tang’s firing for cause.
The K-State program declined every year under Tang. It won 19 games in Year 2, 16 games in Year 3 and currently sits at 10 wins in Year 4. The Wildcats are about to miss the NCAA Tournament for the third straight season.
“The last couple of years,” Taylor said, “we just haven’t been doing what we expected to be doing after the Elite Eight. So I kind of go through that in my brain. I thought this year we started out really well. But the last couple of years haven’t gone where I thought we should have been going.”
Taylor broke the news to Tang during a long conversation Sunday morning in his office.
Tang was allowed to meet with K-State players on Sunday evening after the news became official. Then Taylor named Matthew Driscoll the team’s interim coach and addressed the roster himself.
It was the end of a long day.
“It’s an emotional thing,” Taylor said. “They go through all the standard emotions that you would think. They’re shocked, they’re sad, they’re angry. I just asked them … if they’re angry, they should be angry at me. Then I asked them to finish the year strong.”
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Kellis Robinett
The Wichita Eagle
Kellis Robinett covers Kansas State athletics for The Wichita Eagle and The Kansas City Star. A winner of more than a dozen national writing awards, he lives in Manhattan with his wife and four children.
