Kansas State University Athletics
‘I’ve Got to Empty the Tank’
Feb 27, 2024 | Men's Basketball, Sports Extra
By: D. Scott Fritchen
Tylor Perry is on the phone. He's back home in Fort Coffee, Oklahoma, a town of 400 people, and he's packing his bags for Kansas State. It's late June. He doesn't have long to talk. He'll leave Fort Coffee and the home of Aunt Paula, who let him shoot basketballs onto the top of her home. Yes, he'll leave Aunt Paula's, where he once lived with 13 other family members, including his parents and two older brothers. He loves his family, he tells you. And he says that Aunt Paula "keeps me going," and he says that "Aunt Paula and my mom always put food on the table," and he repeats that he loves his family dearly, and you know he means it because of how his voice cracks.
Yes, Tylor Perry, or "TP," as he is known, loves Fort Coffee. The town, just south of a bend of the Arkansas River and north of U.S. Route 271, about 11 miles from the Arkansas border, reminds him of playing football in the lush green fields and pretending to be Cam Newton. He could see for miles, you see, in those lush green fields, and there's something else to know, something that he remembers about those lush fields.
There was no end in sight.
There was a time, too, when he believed that it would never end, his college basketball career, and yet the 23-year-old young man, the consummate baller, the last-second scorer, the 3-point making, free-throw shooting, assist-getting stat stuffer today is faced with that realization that can haunt senior college basketball players as they peer out into the distance.
The lush fields, it turns out, do eventually end.
Which makes all the more special what we are witnessing in the twilight of Perry's lone season at K-State, the final campaign of an accomplished six-year career, where his deft 3-pointer sweeps through nets and sweeps away those incredulous whispers from outsiders, and he hugs and prays with his teammates, and helps engineer the vaunted five-to-grind period in which "Shark Week" kicks in and the Wildcats stage a furious final five minutes on the basketball court, typically to the dismay of opponents.
On Monday, that opponent happened to be West Virginia, which K-State beat, 94-90, in overtime at Bramlage Coliseum.
Perry, the 5-foot-11, 180-pound point/shooting guard, is a 2,000-point scorer in his college career and a 1,000-point scorer at the Division I level, and has scored in double figures in 21 of 28 games at K-State with a team-high nine 20-point performances. Against West Virginia, Perry scored 29 points, his most points as a Wildcat. He shot 7-for-12 from the floor, including 6-for-11 on 3-pointers, and he sank 9-of-10 free throws. He also added four rebounds and six assists in 41 minutes.
It marked his fourth 20-point performance in the last eight games. He had 23 against Oklahoma. He had 26 against No. 4 Kansas. He had 24 against TCU. And now 29 against the Mountaineers.
"You've got to keep going no matter what," Perry says. "No matter what's getting thrown at you or what people say, you've got to keep going."
Oh, he's going, all right. It's been quite a journey. There was the stellar two-year career at Coffeyville Community College and a celebrated three-year stint at North Texas in which he became one of the best players in program history. He has seen some things since leading Spiro (Okla.) High School to the 2019 Oklahoma 3A State Semifinals as the third-best point guard in the state. He has come a long way since shooting basketballs onto the top of Aunt Paula's home. He led Coffeyville and North Texas to a 109-25 record with four straight 20-win seasons, one NJCAA National Championship, one NIT Championship and two conference titles. Shortly after he led the Mean Green to the NIT title and earned tournament MVP honors, Perry entered the NCAA transfer portal, quickly becoming one of the nation's most sought-after talents.
Which brought him back to Fort Coffee, where he stayed until it was time to head to his next destination. Which happened to be K-State.
"I want to show people I can play at a high-major level," he says into the phone. "I want to show I can do it night in and night out."
Now he sits in the postgame news conference after the West Virginia game, which is a game K-State badly needed to win. The Wildcats improved to 17-11 overall and 7-8 in the Big 12 Conference while the Mountaineers dropped to 9-19 and 4-11. The Wildcats now prepare to visit Cincinnati on Saturday. Then they visit Kansas on Tuesday. And then they host Iowa State on Senior Day next Saturday. And then comes the Big 12 Tournament.
The room gets quiet as Perry begins to speak.
"First of all," he says, "God is good." And you know that he means it because his voice almost cracks. And there were times this season when some doubters wondered if Perry's confidence might crack. Sometimes the ball hasn't always gone into the basket. The whispers, they were out there in the lush green fields, and yet he continued to play and pay it no mind.
"I've had such a great group of guys and coaching staff around me that's told me no matter what to keep going and the work will always pay off and the cream will always rise to the top," he says. "There's so much left to do at the end of the day. Regardless of what I'm shooting or what I'm doing, we have so much farther to go, and that's my biggest concern right now rather than if I'm making shots or not. I've got to empty the tank."
He has dreams, big dreams, to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time in his career.
"For me, it's just emptying the tank right now," he says. "I don't know how much basketball I have left after this, and nothing is promised for me. These are my last days of college, so the biggest thing for me is emptying the tank and whatever happens, I can walk off the court at the end of this with no regrets.
"I want to be able to get these guys back to where they were and go farther."
He has an avid supporter in K-State head coach Jerome Tang.
"We're asking a lot of him and he's delivering and he's playing, studying, practicing and preparing like a kid who wants to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in his career," Tang says. "We're asking, we're stretching him, man, he's really being stretched and he's embracing it. He's just embracing being coached and doing whatever he can and leaving it all on the court for his team."
Seems not too long ago that Perry, upon entering the transfer portal, received the phone call from K-State assistant coach and former UNT assistant coach Jareem Dowling, who served under head coach Grant McCasland. McCasland left UNT for Texas Tech following last season. When Perry and Dowling spoke, it was like old times. When Dowling explained to Perry what they were trying to build at K-State, Perry was sold.
"It was the perfect match," Perry says.
He visited K-State on April 24-26. He committed May 2. He found a journal from when he was 9. One of the passages read: What are you going to do when you grow up?"
Perry wrote, "NBA player."
"I definitely knew," Perry says, "something was on the horizon."
He thinks back to how it all began, Aunt Paula's home, and a packed house. He thinks back to his desire from a young age and his determination to make his dreams come true. He thinks about how he could've given in when times were tough, given up for good, but how he instead continued to walk upon his path. Today, it's all there, all the dreams blazing like that Midwest sun at noon.
"I'm not a quitter, I'm a fighter," he says. "I'm a winner at all costs. I kept going and kept fighting. At the end of the day, God has the last word. As long as we keep telling ourselves, 'We can,' and never, 'We can't,' there's no limit on God. I think we limit ourselves too much. I've learned a lot, but the biggest thing is I'm a fighter."
He's clawing and fighting his way into March and bringing the Wildcats along with him. It could make for a whale of a story.
For now, he's grateful for the win over the Mountaineers.
"I'm just thankful we're on the winning side," he says, "keeping our hopes alive because we know what we're fighting for."
Off in the distance in those lush green fields is the end.
He prays that there are miles and miles still left to go.
Tylor Perry is on the phone. He's back home in Fort Coffee, Oklahoma, a town of 400 people, and he's packing his bags for Kansas State. It's late June. He doesn't have long to talk. He'll leave Fort Coffee and the home of Aunt Paula, who let him shoot basketballs onto the top of her home. Yes, he'll leave Aunt Paula's, where he once lived with 13 other family members, including his parents and two older brothers. He loves his family, he tells you. And he says that Aunt Paula "keeps me going," and he says that "Aunt Paula and my mom always put food on the table," and he repeats that he loves his family dearly, and you know he means it because of how his voice cracks.
Yes, Tylor Perry, or "TP," as he is known, loves Fort Coffee. The town, just south of a bend of the Arkansas River and north of U.S. Route 271, about 11 miles from the Arkansas border, reminds him of playing football in the lush green fields and pretending to be Cam Newton. He could see for miles, you see, in those lush green fields, and there's something else to know, something that he remembers about those lush fields.
There was no end in sight.
There was a time, too, when he believed that it would never end, his college basketball career, and yet the 23-year-old young man, the consummate baller, the last-second scorer, the 3-point making, free-throw shooting, assist-getting stat stuffer today is faced with that realization that can haunt senior college basketball players as they peer out into the distance.
The lush fields, it turns out, do eventually end.
Which makes all the more special what we are witnessing in the twilight of Perry's lone season at K-State, the final campaign of an accomplished six-year career, where his deft 3-pointer sweeps through nets and sweeps away those incredulous whispers from outsiders, and he hugs and prays with his teammates, and helps engineer the vaunted five-to-grind period in which "Shark Week" kicks in and the Wildcats stage a furious final five minutes on the basketball court, typically to the dismay of opponents.
On Monday, that opponent happened to be West Virginia, which K-State beat, 94-90, in overtime at Bramlage Coliseum.
Perry, the 5-foot-11, 180-pound point/shooting guard, is a 2,000-point scorer in his college career and a 1,000-point scorer at the Division I level, and has scored in double figures in 21 of 28 games at K-State with a team-high nine 20-point performances. Against West Virginia, Perry scored 29 points, his most points as a Wildcat. He shot 7-for-12 from the floor, including 6-for-11 on 3-pointers, and he sank 9-of-10 free throws. He also added four rebounds and six assists in 41 minutes.
It marked his fourth 20-point performance in the last eight games. He had 23 against Oklahoma. He had 26 against No. 4 Kansas. He had 24 against TCU. And now 29 against the Mountaineers.
"You've got to keep going no matter what," Perry says. "No matter what's getting thrown at you or what people say, you've got to keep going."
Oh, he's going, all right. It's been quite a journey. There was the stellar two-year career at Coffeyville Community College and a celebrated three-year stint at North Texas in which he became one of the best players in program history. He has seen some things since leading Spiro (Okla.) High School to the 2019 Oklahoma 3A State Semifinals as the third-best point guard in the state. He has come a long way since shooting basketballs onto the top of Aunt Paula's home. He led Coffeyville and North Texas to a 109-25 record with four straight 20-win seasons, one NJCAA National Championship, one NIT Championship and two conference titles. Shortly after he led the Mean Green to the NIT title and earned tournament MVP honors, Perry entered the NCAA transfer portal, quickly becoming one of the nation's most sought-after talents.
Which brought him back to Fort Coffee, where he stayed until it was time to head to his next destination. Which happened to be K-State.
"I want to show people I can play at a high-major level," he says into the phone. "I want to show I can do it night in and night out."
Now he sits in the postgame news conference after the West Virginia game, which is a game K-State badly needed to win. The Wildcats improved to 17-11 overall and 7-8 in the Big 12 Conference while the Mountaineers dropped to 9-19 and 4-11. The Wildcats now prepare to visit Cincinnati on Saturday. Then they visit Kansas on Tuesday. And then they host Iowa State on Senior Day next Saturday. And then comes the Big 12 Tournament.
The room gets quiet as Perry begins to speak.
"First of all," he says, "God is good." And you know that he means it because his voice almost cracks. And there were times this season when some doubters wondered if Perry's confidence might crack. Sometimes the ball hasn't always gone into the basket. The whispers, they were out there in the lush green fields, and yet he continued to play and pay it no mind.
"I've had such a great group of guys and coaching staff around me that's told me no matter what to keep going and the work will always pay off and the cream will always rise to the top," he says. "There's so much left to do at the end of the day. Regardless of what I'm shooting or what I'm doing, we have so much farther to go, and that's my biggest concern right now rather than if I'm making shots or not. I've got to empty the tank."
He has dreams, big dreams, to reach the NCAA Tournament for the first time in his career.
"For me, it's just emptying the tank right now," he says. "I don't know how much basketball I have left after this, and nothing is promised for me. These are my last days of college, so the biggest thing for me is emptying the tank and whatever happens, I can walk off the court at the end of this with no regrets.
"I want to be able to get these guys back to where they were and go farther."
He has an avid supporter in K-State head coach Jerome Tang.
"We're asking a lot of him and he's delivering and he's playing, studying, practicing and preparing like a kid who wants to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time in his career," Tang says. "We're asking, we're stretching him, man, he's really being stretched and he's embracing it. He's just embracing being coached and doing whatever he can and leaving it all on the court for his team."
Seems not too long ago that Perry, upon entering the transfer portal, received the phone call from K-State assistant coach and former UNT assistant coach Jareem Dowling, who served under head coach Grant McCasland. McCasland left UNT for Texas Tech following last season. When Perry and Dowling spoke, it was like old times. When Dowling explained to Perry what they were trying to build at K-State, Perry was sold.
"It was the perfect match," Perry says.
He visited K-State on April 24-26. He committed May 2. He found a journal from when he was 9. One of the passages read: What are you going to do when you grow up?"
Perry wrote, "NBA player."
"I definitely knew," Perry says, "something was on the horizon."
He thinks back to how it all began, Aunt Paula's home, and a packed house. He thinks back to his desire from a young age and his determination to make his dreams come true. He thinks about how he could've given in when times were tough, given up for good, but how he instead continued to walk upon his path. Today, it's all there, all the dreams blazing like that Midwest sun at noon.
"I'm not a quitter, I'm a fighter," he says. "I'm a winner at all costs. I kept going and kept fighting. At the end of the day, God has the last word. As long as we keep telling ourselves, 'We can,' and never, 'We can't,' there's no limit on God. I think we limit ourselves too much. I've learned a lot, but the biggest thing is I'm a fighter."
He's clawing and fighting his way into March and bringing the Wildcats along with him. It could make for a whale of a story.
For now, he's grateful for the win over the Mountaineers.
"I'm just thankful we're on the winning side," he says, "keeping our hopes alive because we know what we're fighting for."
Off in the distance in those lush green fields is the end.
He prays that there are miles and miles still left to go.
Players Mentioned
G
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