The Jerome Tang era of K-State basketball begins “for real” tonight as K-State takes on UTRGV at 8:00 in Bramlage Coliseum. Here are five things to know about UTRGV…

1) The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley is a merger of Texas Pan American and Texas Brownsville that happened in 2012. Their enrollment is approximately 32,000 students.

2) UTRGV plays in the WAC conference. They were picked by both the coaches and media to finish in 13th (last) place in the conference in 2022-23. Grand Canyon is the conference favorite. Stephen F Austin is a familiar tournament team from the WAC.

3) UTRGV’s nickname is the Vaqueros. What’s a vaquero? According to Wikipedia, The vaquero is a horse-mounted livestock herder of a tradition that has its roots in the Iberian Peninsula and extensively developed in Mexico from a methodology brought to Latin America from Spain. The vaquero became the foundation for the North American cowboy.

4) UTRGV is coached by Matt Figger, who coached at K-State as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator under Frank Martin from 2007 to 2012. He then followed Martin to South Carolina and coached there from 2012 to 2017 until taking the head coaching job at Austin Peay, where he coached from 2017 to 2021. This is his second season at UTRGV. They finished 11th in the WAC last season with a 3-15 conference record and were 8-23 overall.

5) Figger has a team with 13 newcomers on it. The lone returning starter is senior Justin Johnson, the 2021-22 All-Western Athletic Conference Second Team and All-Newcomer Team honoree. Johnson was the go-to guy for the Vaqueros, playing 34.8 minutes per game. He averaged 17.7 points per game while shooting 50.1% from the field and 67.9% from the free throw line, hit 33 three-pointers, averaged 6.7 rebounds per game and recorded 24 steals. Johnson was selected to the Preseason All-WAC First Team by the conference’s head coaches.

I would guess that K-State won’t have much trouble tonight, but you never know. It will be interesting to watch this K-State team come together.

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