Jerome Tang shares fun details from his coaching past against Nebraska’s Fred Hoiberg

One of the added benefits that came along with Kansas State hiring Jerome Tang as its new men’s basketball coach is that he has a long history of competing against the Big 12.

After spending nearly two decades working under Scott Drew at Baylor, Tang already knows what it is like to coach against Bill Self and to recruit against Jamie Dixon and to game plan against Bob Huggins.

He even knows what it is like to go against some coaches who operate outside the Big 12, such as Nebraska head man Fred Hoiberg. Before he joined the Cornhuskers, he spent five very successful seasons at Iowa State and led the Cyclones to the NCAA Tournament four straight times.

K-State plays Nebraska at 6 p.m. on Saturday at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City. Tang has never coached a regular-season game inside the arena, but he knows everything about coaching against Hoiberg.

“Offensively they were hard to guard (at Iowa State),” Tang said. “I’m talking hard to guard with spacing. They run so much stuff.”

Tang illustrates that point with a humorous story about Hoiberg.

“The TV camera once caught a clip of his play-call sheet,” Tang said. “It was in his hand and we blew it up. There were like 60 calls that you could make out. We thought we had Fred Hoiberg’s call sheet right here. We got 60 of them. Then we went to play them at their place and somebody had lost the real sheet. There were like 200 calls on the front and the back of this thing. We didn’t even have an ounce of it.”

Turns out, all the homework Tang put in trying to get peak inside Hoiberg’s huddle was wasted energy. Tang watched Hoiberg throughout that game at Hilton Coliseum and listened to all the calls he yelled out. His preparation didn’t help as the Cyclones continually found ways to take advantage of Baylor switches and create favorable matchups.

Tang won’t try to take a shortcut against Hoiberg this time.

“He also used to have this thick white pad and a black marker,” Tang said. “During timeouts he takes it out and says we’re going to do this and draws up a play. Then he rips it off and throws it in the trash can. Playing his teams are less about actions and more about personnel. He tries to manipulate and put his guys in a position to operate in their strength, in space. That is one of the things we are going to have to do, shrink that space but still guard their guys.”

Tang’s first game against Hoiberg as a head coach should be a good one.

K-State (9-1) is off to its best start in more than a decade. Nebraska (6-5) also appears to have improved and owns victories over Florida State, Boston College and Creighton, not to mention an overtime loss against No. 1 Purdue.

This Nebraska squad doesn’t have the same fire power that Iowa State used to possess back when Hoiberg was there. The Huskers rank 108th nationally in efficiency rating and only make 31% of their shots from three-point range.

Still, Tang will prepare for more than 200 calls from Hoiberg.

“It’s a really good test for us,” Tang said. “Fred obviously does a great job with those guys.”