Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang talks about recruiting
Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang talks about recruiting during a Catbacker Tour event last month in Manhattan.
Kansas State basketball coach Jerome Tang already believed he had a winning hand, but he wanted a full house.
On Friday he got it by landing 6-foot-10 former Illinois forward Coleman Hawkins, who announced that he will complete his college career next season at K-State.
With the addition of Hawkins, widely regarded as the top remaining player in the transfer portal, Tang finally has a full 13-man roster heading into the 2024-25 season. Hawkins averaged 12.1 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.5 steals last year for the Illini.
K-State went hard after Hawkins after he withdrew from the NBA Draft, and apparently won him over during a campus visit earlier this week. He originally had a trip to Louisville planned but chose Manhattan instead.
The decision proved to be a lucrative one for Hawkins, who according to reporter Shams Charania of The Athletic and Stadium, got a $2 million NIL deal from Wildcats. K-State had assured Tang earlier this year when he was courted by Arkansas for its coaching vacancy, that it would commit to a bump in NIL funding.
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The month of June proved to be a fruitful one for Tang and the Wildcats, who 10 days earlier landed former Kentucky 7-footer Ugonna Onyenso after he also withdrew from the draft. Those two, along with versatile 6-9 forward Achor Achor from Samford, 6-11 Arkansas transfer Baye Fall, and returning super-senior forward Davin N’Guessan, should provide a major frontcourt upgrade over last year.
Last month during a Catbacker event in Manhattan, Tang still had two spots to fill, indicating that they would determine whether the Wildcats were a good team or a great one.
“Obviously when you have 11, you feel a lot better than when you had eight or whatever, as you go along,” he said at the time. “But we want to compete for a national championship, and I think we have a great group that starts that (but) not a lot of margin for error.
“The goal is to add to it so that we have a margin for error and can be one of the best teams in the country.”
K-State only returns three players — forwards N’Guessan, Taj Manning and Macaleab Rich — from a 2023-24 team that went 19-15 and lost to Iowa in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament. But Tang added eight players from the transfer portal, one junior college player and one from the high school ranks.
The portal transfers are former Michigan point guard Dug Jones, Illinois-Chicago guard CJ Jones, Villanova guard Brendan Hausen and Cal State Fullerton guard Max Jones, plus forwards Fall, Achor, Onyenso and Hawkins. They will be joined by Ellsworth (Iowa) Community College forward Chimobi Ikegwuruka and point guard David Castillo.
Arne Green is based in Salina and covers Kansas State University sports for the Gannett network. He can be reached at agreen@gannett.com or on Twitter at @arnegreen.