Tyrek Coger, an Oklahoma State University basketball player who recently transferred from a junior college, died Thursday after a team workout, according to a statement from the university's athletic department.
Coger, 21, played last season at Cape Fear Community College and arrived on the Oklahoma State campus in Stillwater July 5 to join the team. Coger, a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, collapsed after the workout and was transported to the Stillwater Medical Center where he was pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m., according to the 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,"
Oklahoma State basketball coach Brad Underwood said in the university's statement.
"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," Underwood added.
The Stillwater News Press reported this month after Coger joined the Oklahoma State team that he had surgery his senior year in high school to remove fluid from around the brain. Coger told the newspaper then he went to the doctor because of repeated headaches and the physician discovered the excess fluid around the brain.
"At the moment, I'm thinking 'basketball is over,'" Coger told the newspaper earlier this month for the story. "I gotta think beyond basketball now."
Coger told the newspaper that the surgery kept him out of basketball for about a month but was able to continue playing. He said, according to the News Press, that it took three weeks for him to get medical clearance to play at his first junior college stop at Eastern Florida State College in Cocoa, Florida.
Oklahoma State's basketball program has endured its share of tragedies. In 2011, women's basketball coach Kurt Budke and assistant coach Miranda Serna died with two others when a plane they were in crashed in Arkansas during a recruiting trip.
Ten people, including two men's basketball players, six staffers and two pilots, were killed when their airplane crashed during a snowstorm as the team returned to Stillwater after a road game in Colorado in 2001.
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