John Calipari on Jerome Tang, Kansas State

During his Saturday afternoon press conference at the NCAA Tournament, John Calipari shared his thoughts on Kentucky Basketball‘s next opponent on the bracket, the Kansas State Wildcats. Kentucky will meet the Big 12’s third-place team on Sunday, and those other Wildcats will bring a unique style of play to the second-round game in Greensboro, North Carolina. A contrast to Calipari’s brand of basketball in Lexington, Kansas State goes small and spaces the floor. Far undersized versus Kentucky, Kansas State will struggle to keep Oscar Tshiebwe from owning the boards, but Kentucky will have its challenges, too.

“You’re going to have to go out and play these guys,” Calipari said of his opponent’s stretch offense.

“But the other side of it is, that they’ve got to play us too. So it’s — okay, you know, we are coming at you, and they do a great job of trapping the post and creating opportunities to steal balls and be disruptive.

“They also play some good zone. They do on the baseline out. They put a big man on the ball. They do some good stuff. They really do.”

He noted he spent the morning watching the film on Kansas State before Saturday’s press conference to preview the matchup.

On Jerome Tang and barely remembering their past meetings

Kansas State’s Jerome Tang is in his first season as a college basketball head coach, so Sunday’s game will be his first against his Hall of Fame opponent, John Calipari. But it’s not Tang’s first run-in with Calipari and Kentucky going back to Tang’s days on Scott Drew’s staff at Baylor, where he was an assistant coach from 2003 to 2022 with the title of associate head coach from 2017 to 2022.

Friday night, Tang reminded reporters that Baylor won its last two games versus Kentucky (although he took credit for a third that does not exist.)

“We broke their 55-game win streak when I was at Baylor at Rupp, and the other two times that we played them on a neutral site, we won,” said Tang to a question about Kentucky fans in Greensboro. “You know, I understand how the Cats travel, but our Cats travel too.”

Tang is correct; he was a part of the Baylor staff that beat eighth-ranked Kentucky in Rupp Arena in 2012, then again in 2013 in Dallas in the second game of a doubleheader with both women’s teams in AT&T Stadium.

Calipari could only recall the weather.

“Jeez, he can remember that? I can’t remember. You know what I remember? An ice storm in Dallas, and the game before us, we said, let’s have the women play, and then we’ll play. Four overtimes later, we started the game at midnight, and it was an ice storm. We almost couldn’t get out. Almost couldn’t get to the game.

So that’s what I remember. The rest of it I don’t remember.”

Calipari said of Tang’s current job at Kansas State, “He has done a great job. I mean, defensively disruptive, scrappy, 50/50 balls, freedom offensively, space the court. You know, a bunch of really good players. He has done a great job.

“And you think of, you know, where they were and where they are now and where they’re headed, oh, great job.”

On Markquis Nowell and Nae’Qwan Tomlin

In addition to his thoughts on Jerome Tang, Calipari was explicitly asked about two of Kansas State’s players, Markquis Nowell and Nae’Qwan Tomlin.

He called Tomlin a good player. “They have guys that are kind of positionless. Like, you would say, is he a 4 or a 3? Is he a 5? What is he? He is just a basketball player, and he is a good athlete. He is a good player.”

On Nowell, Calipari replied that he hadn’t seen many small guards–Nowell is 5-foot-8–like him.

“No. No. And deep, quick. Big-time usage. Creates for his teammates. He is really — he is an All-American, and he deserves to be.”

Calipari will see those two and the rest of No. 3 seed Kansas State on Sunday at 2:40 p.m.