This is the job Jerome Tang wanted. More than the others. That much was clear last spring when the long-time Baylor assistant set up his Alexa to play "Wabash Cannonball" as the Kansas State search committee walked through the door.

Tang knew exactly the statement he was making before the interview began. That K-State fight song has been seared into the fiber of every Wildcat since it was the last piece of sheet music rescued from an on-campus fire in the late 1960s.  

The 56-year-old native of Trinidad and Tobago wanted to be part of that fiber. 

"We were supposed to do a two-hour interview," K-State athletic director Gene Taylor recalled. "An hour into it, he did most of the talking. He walked us through offense, defense. He said, 'I've got to go to the restroom.' I said, 'Fellas, I'm done. What are we doing? Let's make an offer.' "

That's the short version of why Kansas State is No. 5 in the AP Top 25, its highest ranking since reaching No. 3 in 2010-11, and leads the Big 12 nearing the halfway point of the conference season. Following Bruce Weber's firing, Tang took over a team that had two scholarship players, added 13 new faces and blended it into what is currently the best start in the country by a first-year Division I head coach (17-2). The Cats have already won three more games than they did all last season.