Drew has all the information on what Coach Tang’s newest high-dollar acquisition brings to the Wildcats.
Kansas State basketball added one of the top transfers in the portal to the 2025-’26 roster when Memphis transfer PJ Haggerty announced his commitment to Jerome Tang and the Wildcats on May 26.
Haggerty is a 6’3”, 191-pound combo guard originally from Crosby, Texas (Crosby High School). He was underappreciated as a recruit coming out of the Houston area despite averaging 33 points a game as a junior and 28 points as a senior, leading his Crosby team to their first regional final since the 1980s. PJ was considered a three-star recruit and signed with TCU in the 2022 recruiting class.
His stay in the DFW was short. He played six games, took a redshirt, and hit the portal, presumably looking for more playing time with a move to Tulsa. Betting on himself paid off. He started every game for the Golden Hurricane as a redshirt freshman in the 2023-’24 season. He averaged 21.2 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 3.8 assists as the centerpiece of a team that improved from 5-25 in 2022-’23 to 16-15 in 2023-’24. Haggerty was named Third Team All-ACC and was the AAC and National Freshman of the Year. When he signed with Penny Hardaway and Memphis, he was considered the sixth-best portal player in the 2024-’25 portal class.
Last season at Memphis, Haggerty proved that the numbers from Tulsa were real. He averaged 21.7 points, 3.7 assists, and 5.8 rebounds for a team that finished 29-6 and won the AAC regular season and conference tournament. The Tigers received a 5th seed in the NCAA tournament but were upset in the first round by Colorado State. Penny’s team was dealt a blow when star point guard Tyreese Hunter went down to injury in the Conference semi-final against Tulane and missed the remainder of the season. Haggerty and big man Dain Dainja were enough to overcome the Hunter injury in the AAC tournament. They couldn’t repeat the trick against Colorado State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Haggerty put up 18 points, but was an uncharacteristic one-of-eight from three. He finished the season with enough awards to fill a trophy case, including AAC Player of the Year, first team All-AAC, and was a consensus second team All-American.
He declared for the draft this offseason and entered his name into the transfer portal at the same time. After an elite showing at the NBA combine, it was rumored he might stay in the draft, but ultimately pulled his name and accepted K-State’s reported 2.5 million dollar offer to return to college basketball (reported by Field of 68’s Jeff Goodman).
Haggerty joins fellow transfers Nate Johnson (Akron), Marcus Johnson (Bowling Green), Abdi Baskir Jr. (Monmouth), and Khamari McGriff (UNC-Wilmington) in Manhattan for the upcoming season. The ‘Cats also hit the international market, landing Serbian star Andrej Kostic.
PJ Haggerty: PJ Swaggerty
Kansas State needed a point guard, and PJ Haggerty needed a place to play point guard. In the world of jumbo-sized NBA wings, the 6’2.25” Haggerty has to prove he can run the show if he wants a shot to play at the highest level of professional basketball. Jerome Tang needed someone to run the show, the money was good enough, and now the Wildcats have a returning All-American on the roster.
Last season, Memphis essentially played two point guards. PJ shared ball handling and distribution duties with Tyrese Hunter. He led the Tigers in assists with 131 dimes but also led in turnovers with 116. That’s the part of his game he needs to clean up in Manhattan; instead of averaging 3.7 assists and 3.3 turnovers, Kansas State needs his assist numbers to double while his turnovers stay the same.
While his ability to run a team may be a question mark, his ability to score isn’t. Haggerty is an elite college scorer. He’s quick, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider them an elite athlete. However, that doesn’t matter with his deep bag of floaters and bank shots around the rim. He excels at drawing fouls and still finishing with a soft touch. He was 63rd in the nation in fouls drawn per 40 minutes last season, and was third in the nation in fouls drawn at Tulsa in 2023-’24. PJ is at his best when he can get downhill and use his smooth pull-up midrange jumper or finish in the paint.
What he is not, or at least has not been so far, is a knock-down perimeter shooter. He hit a respectable 34% of his attempts last season, but was ice cold down the stretch. From February 23 to their exit from the tournament on March 21, Memphis played in nine games, and Haggerty hit exactly three shots from beyond the arc, and two came in a blowout win over South Florida. That’s another thing Haggerty has to prove to the NBA scouts this season. He needs to show he can shoot the ball consistently from the outside instead of his streaky shooting with Memphis.
Beyond his scoring ability, Haggerty brings swagger to the Kansas State roster. Simply put, he knows he’s the man when he’s on the court. He thinks he can score on or over anyone, and he’s right more often than wrong. On a team without many proven players at this level of basketball, dropping a second-team All-American into the point guard role can only be considered a good thing. Last season, it felt like the ‘Cats weren’t sure who they wanted to have with the ball in their hands and the game on the line.
That question was answered for the 2025-’26 team with this addition.
I’m not sure if this will be enough to vault K-State into the NCAA Tournament, but I like their chances a hell of a lot more with Haggerty leading the charge.