Fate Reunites Colbert with Tang at K-State

By: D. Scott Fritchen

"I knew I had to leave," Jerrell Colbert says as he occupies a chair in the Ice Family Basketball Center one day in October. A gray hoodie with "K-State" emblazoned in shiny black print and black-and-gray camouflage sweatpants drape over his 6-foot-10, 235-pound frame. At the moment, the top-150 recruit in 2021 is discussing his path to Kansas State — and exactly what he plans to do in his sophomore season.

"I want to prove my talents," he says. "There are a lot of really good teams in the Big 12. I just want to show them what we're really about and show them we're here now. It's over.

"We're going to take off."

Colbert was the first-ever signee for new head coach Jerome Tang. He visited K-State on April 16 and signed with the Wildcats two days later, embarking upon a new life with three years of eligibility remaining in Manhattan.

But March 29 is also on Colbert's mind. That's the day he signed his official papers and entered his name into the Division I transfer portal. Colbert played in four out of the first 10 games at LSU and never stepped onto the basketball court the rest of the season under head coach Will Wade. It was not how Colbert envisioned his time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So he had to leave. He had to. No doubt about it.

Thirty-minutes after Colbert put his name into the transfer portal, he says that he received his first phone call. It was Tang. We talk about how life sometimes goes full circle, and man, isn't that the truth?

"If you told me this would happen, I wouldn't believe it," Colbert says. "I wouldn't believe it to be true."

It was Tang who met Colbert for the first time while watching him play his eighth-grade year at Angleton Junior High in Angleton, Texas, about 44 miles south of Houston. It was Tang who began recruiting him. It was Tang who was enamored by this 6-foot-7 phenom, so raw yet talented with how he effortlessly glided up and down the court in the eighth grade.

"My skills were really showing, and there was my athleticism, and me dunking, and doing putback dunks and sprinting up the court," Colbert says. "Everybody started recruiting me. That's when I kind of blew up."

Tang recruited Colbert to Baylor, where he served as associate head coach under Scott Drew. The Bears finished the 2015-16 season ranked No. 24 in the final Associated Press Top 25 Poll with a 22-12 record and a ninth-consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.

Colbert hadn't yet touched a basketball for Rayburn High School, hadn't yet played at Cornerstone Christian Academy in San Antonio, and he hadn't yet made his way to Houston High School in Germantown, Tennessee, where he shined his senior season.

No, Colbert hadn't yet embarked upon his star-studded path on the hardwood. He was a boy with a ball and a dream.

And Tang wanted him in Waco.

"I liked how much Coach Tang loved and cared about the game of basketball, and how much he loved people," Colbert says. "I maintained that relationship. When good people are around me, I keep them."

Colbert was around some of the best high school talent in the country. After a standout junior season at Cornerstone Christian Academy in which he averaged 12 points and 11 rebounds, he was invited to the Pangos All-American Festival in Phoenix, where he played alongside Jabari Smith (Auburn), K.J. Adams (Kansas), J.D. Davison (Alabama) and TyTy Washington (Kentucky). He played against future No. 1 NBA Draft pick Paolo Banchero (Duke).

"It was an amazing feeling playing against talent like that," Colbert says.

He led Houston (Tenn.) High School to its first-ever Class 3A State Championship in 2020-21 while playing for former NBA player Mike Miller and starring alongside Johnathan Lawson (Oregon), Mason Miller (Creighton) and T.J. Madlock (South Carolina State).

"Playing for Coach Mike was an honor," Colbert says. "He's like family to me, too."

Colbert was five years old the first time he picked up a basketball, but he never took the sport seriously until his sixth-grade year. Both of his parents, Michael and Bernice Colbert, played basketball, as did his older brother, Terrell, who's eight years older than Jerrell.

"Me watching Terrell dunk and shoot and really take off," Colbert says, "I really wanted to be the next guy."

Colbert was 6-foot in the sixth grade. He grew to 6-foot-5 in the seventh grade, when he dunked a basketball for the first time. He grew two more inches in the eighth grade and reached 6-foot-9 his freshman year of high school. He reached 6-foot-10 his senior year.

Colbert held 17 high-major scholarship offers before selecting LSU.

"It was a tough process for sure, because there were so many people who wanted you to play with them," he says. "It was a good process for sure. How cool Coach Tang was, he just wanted me to succeed. Wherever I went, Coach Tang just wanted me to show everyone what I was all about."

He didn't get his opportunity to do so at LSU.

Now he gets his chance at K-State.

"It's crazy to be here," he says. "That's God right there. Leaving LSU, there was no doubt in me committing here right away. He just said that He was going to get me where I needed to be."

As for Colbert's greatest challenge so far?

"I've learned how I can really push myself through fatigue," he says. "We had 'Shark Week,' and I did things that sound crazy, like 61 suicides. You had to prove that you could mentally get through it, that you could get through a situation no matter how hard it sounds. It was a lot of running, pushing sleds, a lot of footwork, defensive slides, everything."

In practice, he's proven himself to be a rim protector, a dunker, a guy who can get up and down the court in a hurry — precisely what the Wildcats need this season.

"I love Coach Tang's pride and how much he really cares and believes in us," he says. "I want to get Coach Tang a ring. I've been around a lot of people in my life. Coach Tang is one of the best people I've ever met."

It's a reunion several years in the making.

"The K-State uniform is going to feel really good," he says. "A different purple, for sure. It's the right color of purple, most definitely. Manhattan feels like home.

"It's exactly where I need to be."

Kansas State University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Jerrell Colbert

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