NEW YORK — Kansas State coach Jerome Tang is a man who rebuilt a college basketball program on the notion of “crazy faith,” an idea so audacious it required just the right adjective in front of it. So in the days before a Sweet 16 classic, the Wildcats’ coaching staff went about planting the seeds of belief. It began on Tuesday, during a team meeting inside a hotel in Manhattan, not the heartland college town of 54,000 from which they hail but rather the concrete jungle where dreams are made (and basketball legends are forged). In less than 48 hours, Kansas State would play Michigan State in an NCAA Tournament East Regional semifinal at Madison Square Garden, and Tang and his staff had compiled a montage of film clips that would show the path to victory. The highlights, according to Kansas State senior Desi Sills, were culled from two old games Michigan State had played against Baylor, where Tang was an assistant coach and loyal soldier for 19 years. The first game was from 2016, when Baylor drubbed the Spartans in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas; the second was from last season, when two programs met in Atlantis again, and Baylor rolled for a second time.
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The message was simple: Michigan State’s defenders were going to live in the passing lanes, hugging their man and doing what the K-State staff calls “ball watching.” So the Wildcats would punish them with a heavy diet of back-cuts, slips and anything headed toward the basket. As the clips played, Markquis Nowell, the Wildcats’ diminutive point guard, watched the screen and cataloged the looks. It was all he needed to see.
“We knew how Michigan State plays defense,” he would say.
The belief was borne out on Thursday night, in the most exhilarating game of this NCAA Tournament, a thriller that resembled a heavyweight title bout. Or, as Nowell put it, “A ‘Rocky’ fight.” Michigan State kept pressuring out high. Nowell, the Harlem-bred darling of this tourney, kept delivering dimes to his cutting teammates. But it wasn’t until the final minute of overtime that Nowell and Kansas State showed just how crazy their faith could be.
The game was tied with 59 seconds left in overtime. Nowell was playing on a tender ankle after rolling it early in the second half. The Wildcats led by seven with under five minutes left in regulation before the Spartans forced the extra period, and in the moment, none of that seemed to matter. As Nowell brought the ball up the court, he turned to a small group of Michigan State fans in the first rows of the Garden, a crew that included Spartans legend Mateen Cleaves, and offered two words: “Watch this.” Moments later, he crossed half court, looked over toward Tang, engaged in a demonstrative conversation with his head coach, then, without pause, fired a two-handed lob pass toward the rim, where a cutting teammate Keyontae Johnson hauled in the pass and delivered a reverse flush. The Wildcats finished the game on a 6-1 run, Nowell iced the 98-93 overtime victory with a steal in the final seconds, and No. 3 seed Kansas State will play No. 9 Florida Atlantic on Saturday in the Elite Eight, where the program can advance to its first Final Four since 1964.
MARKQUIS NOWELL. ABSOLUTELY UNREAL.#MarchMadness @KStateMBB pic.twitter.com/iuih64m4Ex
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) March 24, 2023
“This one was special,” Nowell said. “In front of my hometown, in front of the city that loves me. I can’t even put into words how blessed and grateful I am.”
Nowell finished with 20 points and a men’s NCAA Tournament-record 19 assists. He has tallied a record 42 assists in three games. He is the 5-foot-8 engine of one of college basketball’s most unexpected one-year turnarounds, a New York City point guard transformed into a fun-sized version of Kemba Walker, a legend in the Big and Little Apple. “He’s the best point guard in America,” Sills said.
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One year ago, Kansas State was coming off a 14-17 season, which resulted in the firing of head coach Bruce Weber. The Wildcats had gone to the Elite Eight as recently as 2018 and won two Big 12 regular season championships since 2013, so it wasn’t as if the program had flatlined. But it did feel a little lost. Nowell, who had one year of eligibility remaining, was spending his days sending text messages to K-State athletic director Gene Taylor. One message served as an endorsement for Tang, who was then an emerging candidate. When Tang was officially hired, he unwittingly knew he had to return the favor. His first priority: find a way to make sure that Nowell returned.
“When I was at Baylor,” Tang said late Thursday night, “and I watched film of him, I told our staff: Pound for pound, he was the toughest kid in the Big 12. And I knew when I got here, I had to figure out how to keep that dude here. And the great crazy thing is, I didn’t have to figure out how to keep him here. He was staying.”
In one season together, Tang and Nowell discovered they were kindred spirits. Tang wanted players who exhibited the crazy faith he coveted; Nowell wanted a coach who believed in him. On Thursday, they carried the idea one step further. Tang danced during a locker room celebration that left water dripping from the ceiling. Nowell smiled after playing through pain.
“He didn’t care how much he hurt,” Tang said.
Nor did the Wildcats care much about what the outside world expected of them. On Thursday night, sixth-man Ismael Massoud had 15 points and four 3-pointers after beginning the season out of the rotation. Johnson, the former Florida star, finished with 22 points and six rebounds, more than two years after a heart condition threatened to end his career. As Tang stood in a back lounge in the K-State locker room, he reminded a group of reporters that his team had been a Vegas underdog against No. 6 seed Kentucky in the second round and, as he put it, the “No. 1 team to be upset” in the Sweet 16.
“We love that,” Tang said. “I hope they pick against us the next round.”
Jerome Tang built his first Kansas State team around a 5-8 point guard, and Markquis Nowell has validated that faith many times over. (Robert Deutsch / USA Today)
It doesn’t matter if you still have doubt. The Wildcats believe. And as they sat on the bench in the moments before overtime, after Nowell had missed a potential game-winning layup at the end of regulation, Tang cracked a smile. Someone noted that the Wildcats had not lost an overtime game all season. Tang was just elated to still be playing.
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“Five more minutes,” he said.
It would offer just enough time for Nowell to unleash an audacious lob in the final minute. It was a pass so unexpected that it caught Michigan State off guard and caused most of the viewers at home to assume that the expressive communication between Tang and his point guard must have been some sort of ruse, a planned tactic to distract the Spartans.
Tang claimed that wasn’t the case.
“He wanted to run one play,” he said. “I wanted to run another one that would result in pretty much the same thing, and while they got caught up in us bickering with each other, he and Keyontae made eye contact and we got the back door.”
It was players making a play, Tang would say, the perfect encapsulation of preparation and instinct and belief.
“We got eye contact,” Nowell said, “and he was like, ‘Lob, lob.’ I just threw it up.”
It was a crazy play. It was a crazy victory. It was exactly what Tang wanted.
(Top photo of Markquis Nowell: Al Bello / Getty Images)
Rustin Dodd is a features writer for The Athletic based in New York. He previously covered the Royals for The Athletic, which he joined in 2018 after 10 years at The Kansas City Star. Follow Rustin on Twitter @rustindodd
