Furman pulled off one of the biggest upsets<\/a> of March Madness’ first weekend, knocking off No. 4 seed Virginia after reaching the Tournament for the first time since 1980. Jalen Slawson and Mike Bothwell were a big part of the Paladins’ success, averaging more than 33 combined points after deciding to play together for a fifth season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThey weren\u2019t just scorers. They weren\u2019t just really good basketball players. They became leaders,\u201d Furman coach Bob Richey said. \u201cThey learned how to bear the burden of expectation. They learned how to bear the burden of people thinking, hey, is this story going to be written how it\u2019s supposed to be written?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kansas State still has pen to paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Wildcats weren’t given much of a chance this season. Tang took a calculated approach to building his roster after 19 seasons as an assistant at Baylor, searching for players who would be the right fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One was already there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nowell, a 5-foot-7 guard who plays well above his size, averaged 12.4 points under Bruce Weber last season. He upped it to 17.1 while finishing second nationally with 7.8 assists per game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sills arrived in Manhattan following stints at Arkansas and Arkansas State. Greene played two seasons at Manhattan \u2014 the one in New York \u2014 and Stony Brook before heading to Kansas State. Iyiola, a 6-9 forward from Nigeria, played at Stetson, Arkansas and Hofstra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The quartet helped Tang navigate a successful first season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel like we\u2019re trying to set a standard, trying to build a legacy for the younger guys that that\u2019s what you want to play in, the best tournament in the country,” Sill said. “So we\u2019re going to keep on working hard, just try to keep doing what we do so they know what the standards are when we leave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
___<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AP Sports Writers Jim Vertuno, Fred Goodall and Aaron Beard contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jerome Tang took his time finding the right players to fit into the program he wanted to build at Kansas State. They meshed just right, taking Tang and the Wildcats to the Sweet 16 in a season that started with them being picked to finish last in the Big 12. Four have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":270660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270482"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270484,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270482\/revisions\/270484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/270660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}