After a disappointing 2025-26 season, Kansas State basketball cleaned house with a new head coach and a completely new roster. The hope is that a fresh start and a new recruiting approach will shift the program's recent trajectory.
Still, many anticipate it will be a rough start. No star power or recurring players doesn't exactly instill any outside confidence that the Wildcats will bounce back from last season, or even be relatively better than the 2026 result.
College basketball insider Jon Rothstein is among those that doesn't have much faith in the team.
Rothstein is far from alone in this, as not many believe Kansas State will be anything more than a basement dweller. The program won just three conference matchups last season after being projected as one of the nation's biggest potential risers. Jerome Tang was fired mid-season after three consecutive underwhelming seasons and a fiery postgame presser that put the dagger in his Wildcats tenure.
The Wildcats brought in Casey Alexander as the next man in charge, but only worsened in the transfer portal window. They lost PJ Haggerty, Abdi Bashir Jr., David Castillo, Dorin Buca, and all their players from last season except Andrej Kostic. Even for their individual flaws, having some familiarity would've been nice for a coach taking over a new program. He doesn't have anyone from his previous school, either, so he has double the work of building familiarity within the team and as the head coach.
Plus, having a scorer like Haggerty or an inside presence like Buca would've been nice. The players the program picked up have potential, but nowhere near the star status they boasted in 2025.
Nevertheless, Alexander accepts the challenge of starting from scratch, as this is likely the direction the program must go after a disastrous few years. Even with the discouragement of having no players from last season - Belmont or Kansas State - Alexander is embracing the challenge of getting the program back to being a competitive unit.
"It's more difficult any time that you have a significant number of new players," Alexander said in his Big 12 interview. "And in this case, for me, everybody's new. But even for Kansas State, everybody’s new except for one. So we have a lot of work to do, but there’s plenty of time to do it. I’m excited about that challenge."
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