An Oklahoma State basketball player collapsed and died Thursday. So far, no one knows why.
According to reports, 21-year-old junior college transfer Tyrek Coger collapsed following a team workout Thursday afternoon. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital at 6:23 p.m.
Coach Brad Underwood released the following statement:
“Tyrek was excited to be at Oklahoma State and had such passion for the game and was looking forward to being an OSU Cowboy. Losing a member of the team is like losing a member of the family. But we know our loss pales in comparison to the pain his family is going through.”
The cause of death hasn’t yet been disclosed. Therefore, there’s no way to tell if the current heat wave dousing the country had anything to do with the player’s death. Coger did have surgery to remove fluid around his brain his senior year of high school.
Coger arrived on campus to become a cowboy just this month, on July 5. He played last season at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, North Carolina.
This is more terrible news coming from the Big 12 school in Stillwater, as ESPN noted their tragedies over the past several years:
A 25-year-old woman was charged with four counts of second-degree murder after she plowed into a crowd of people during the school’s homecoming parade in October. Four people died.
In 2011, women’s basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant coach Miranda Serna were killed, along with two others, when their plane crashed during a recruiting trip in Arkansas.
In 2001, 10 people were killed — two men’s basketball players, six staffers and two pilots — when their plane crashed during a snowstorm as they traveled to Stillwater following a road game in Colorado.
This appears to be Coger’s Facebook page. The 6-foot-9 big man had previously committed to Ole Miss before SEC transfer rules determined him ineligible.
Josh Helmuth is the editor of Crave Sports. Follow him on Twitter here.
