Nate Lowen
September 29th, 2026
Top 3 Takes: Casey Alexander’s Preseason Press Conference
As K-State men’s basketball HC Casey Alexander is less than a month away from his first exhibition game at the helm, there are a lot of questions around his first team before they take over the Octagon of Doom. Coach Alexander’s former job with the Belmont Bruins saw multiple 20 win seasons in a row and one of the most efficient offenses in the country, but that was a feat performed in the Missouri Valley Conference. The new challenge for Coach Alexander is bringing that same efficiency against some of the toughest teams in the country as the newest coach to join the Big 12.
With a host of expectations and building excitement around the season in the Little Apple, here are the top three takeaways from Casey Alexander’s latest press conference:
“There are a lot of somethings that we need to improve.” – Casey Alexander
The interviewers were coming out of the gate hot and asked a quick, “Is there something you need to improve?” which prompted Head Coach Casey Alexander’s response, restating that it’s still very early on for this team and the development of the program.
I can only assume that Coach Alexander understood how that can be taken the wrong way, so he quickly followed up with an uplifting note about how the team has already learned so much, and he believes this team could “definitely play a game today if we needed to, and we’re still five weeks away from our first.”
A noticeable improvement that Kansas State fans should be ecstatic for is the free throw percentage taking an increase under Casey Alexander’s system.
Excluding former head coach Jerome Tang’s 2022-2023 Cinderella season, he has led the roster in the low seventies, with last year’s total at 71%. His highest percentage amongst the group was 85% with Nate Johnson.
Coach Alexander was able to produce three players to average over ten minutes and drain over 90% of their attempts with one more player who played in 27 games with 88.9% from the stripe. This was noticeably led by former Belmont star Tyler Lundblade at 93.4%.
K-State’s only 2025 returner, Andrej Kostic, may not be taking the sophomore leap on schedule.
“He’s come a long way,” said Coach Alexander.
The largest excuse is Andrej has been dealing with injuries, which has prohibited him from progressing as much as the team had hoped. The Wildcat’s brought in Kostic on a roughly 2.5 million dollar deal last season, and he struggled to see the floor in former head coach Jerome Tang’s roster.
Andrej Kostic finished last season with 5.2 points per game and being a noticeable offensive presence for the team. Last year Kostic stated that the Tang departure from the team made him want to wait for an immediate decision on a 2026 return, but he has been the only one to stick with the Wildcats in his return and hopes to take the next step in development for a late-season starting roster spot push alike to David Castillo’s sophomore season last year and possibly Cam Carter’s from a few seasons before that.
“Accountability is really important to me… guys that represent K-State well.”
His first meeting with the team on May 31st was nothing about “the x’s and o’s” and “entirely about what the expectations are and who we wanted to be.”
With an education background, I have noticed that it isn’t the smartest choice for student learning to hit the ground running with assignments and practice but rather to explain what class goals are, personal goals are, and expectations for every single day in the building. Teaching and coaching are so similar and rarely have differences in anything outside of the subject.
This approach by Casey Alexander is promising because he wants the team to decide who they are so he can coach these teams’ goals and not only his personal goals. The only downside to a decision like this is when a coach goes too far into the team’s hands and does something similar to when Jerome Tang would have the team lead practices and film sessions, which is too much of a hands off approach from the coach.