Jerome Tang adds mid-year transfer to Kansas State Wildcats men’s basketball roster
Coach Jerome Tang has added a mid-season transfer to the Kansas State men’s basketball roster.
Tyreek Smith, a 6-foot-6 senior guard who previously played at Texas Tech and Oklahoma State and SMU and Memphis, has enrolled at K-State in time for the start of the spring semester.
He will not play this season, but he is eligible to practice and travel with the Wildcats for the remainder of the 2024-25 campaign. Smith will then seek a waiver in hopes of using his final year of college eligibility with K-State next season.
Smith was supposed to play for Memphis this season and even suited up for the Tigers during an exhibition game against North Carolina. But he chose to leave the team in October for complicated reasons.
He has since resurfaced at K-State.
The plan is for Smith to sit out this season on a redshirt and then play next season. That will allow him to develop and learn Tang’s system before he is eligible to play during the 2025-26 season.
K-State is hopeful that he will receive a waiver because he didn’t play for the Tigers during the regular season. He also spent one of his seasons playing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Smith is a former three-star recruit and a native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
He is a familiar face for the Wildcats.
Not only has he played against them, former K-State coach Bruce Weber recruited him out of high school. But he ultimately chose to play for Texas Tech.
He averaged 2.6 points during his lone season with the Red Raiders. Then he transferred to Oklahoma State and made 16 starts over the course of two seasons. After that, he played for SMU and averaged 8.2 points last season.