Georgetown PF/C Tre King No Longer on Team
The Eastern Kentucky transfer is no longer on the team because he "did not meet the conduct expectations of the University", per a Georgetown athletic department state.
After weeks of speculation regarding the status of Eastern Kentucky transfer Tre King, Georgetown finally put a rest to the rumors and unease surrounding King’s situation, announcing in a statement on Friday afternoon that King is not enrolled in classes and “will not be on the Men’s Basketball team” after not meeting the “conduct expectations” of the University.
The full statement— all two lines of it— reads:
Junior transfer Tre King did not meet the conduct expectations of the University. He is not enrolled in classes and will not be on the Men’s Basketball team.
The news comes at a particularly bad time for Georgetown, with less than one month to go until their regular season tips off at home against Dartmouth. Now, after Qudus Wahab transferred to Maryland and with King’s dismissal, the Hoyas will be forced to rely on rising juniors Timothy Ighoefe and Malcolm Wilson, along with incoming freshman center Ryan Mutombo.
Ighoefe is the likely (only?) choice to start now, which is concerning, considering he has only started one game in two seasons for Georgetown and averaged only 9.2 minutes per game last season as a sophomore.
King, who averaged 14.9 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game last season at Eastern Kentucky, was expected to start at either the 4 or the 5 for Georgetown this season. With his shot-making ability and mobility, he would have brought an element of athleticism and perimeter play that Georgetown was missing at the center position last season.
For a team that got torched in the NCAA Tournament in March playing an immobile center on defense who couldn’t get out to the perimeter to guard the three-point shot, Georgetown is likely going to be back in a similar spot defensively at the center position this year. In fact, it could get worse.
It’s a scary proposition for a program that is hoping to capitalize on some long-awaited momentum after winning the Big East Tournament title last season. Now, it would have to be considered a success if this year’s team finished any higher than 10th in the Big East this season. That’s not the level of expectations you hope to see from a team with a head coach heading into Year 5 of his tenure.
No matter where you fall on your opinion of Patrick Ewing, the fact of the matter is that Tre King is the sixth player to be dismissed from the team during Ewing’s five years at Georgetown (Chris Sodom, Antwan Walker, Josh LeBlanc, Myron Gardner, and Galen Alexander being the others).
Sure, you can say that Ewing wasn’t responsible for those players acting like knuckleheads and being dismissed for a variety of offcourt conduct issues. But the buck stops with Ewing at the end of the day, and he is responsible for bringing these players into the program. At some point, you need to figure out a way to help keep these kids in check once they get to campus, or do a better job evaluating character when recruiting them in the first place. Something needs to change, because the current system isn’t working too well.
As these offcourt conduct issues with players continue to crop up, it calls into question Ewing’s oversight of the program, and why these incidents continue to happen.
In a series of tweets following the announcement from the university, Tre King’s uncle, Tony King, expressed his strong displeasure with the announcement.
In a since-deleted tweet, Tony said that his brother— Tre’s father— and their legal team were “determining a course of action.”
So now, with 29 days left until their season begins, Georgetown men’s basketball has no clear capable starting center, and now has to contend with disgruntled family members of a now-ex-transfer who want to get their side of the story out there before all is said and done.
That’s not what you want heading into a pivotal fifth year for Patrick Ewing and Georgetown, who continue to deal with off-the-court headaches far more than you would like for an academic institution like Georgetown that prides itself on doing things by the book and exhibiting class in all facets of their operations, both academically, athletically, and otherwise.
Patrick Ewing is slated to speak at Big East Media Day on October 19, his first time speaking to the media since Georgetown’s 96-73 drubbing at the hands of Colorado in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on March 20.
There were bound to be plenty of questions already, because that’s what happens when you go seven months (!!!) without taking questions from the media, but now there will be a whole new set of questions for Ewing to answer after this Tre King news.
It was going to be a challenging year for Georgetown already, before today’s news broke. Now, the going gets tougher for this young Hoyas team. How they respond to this adversity will say a lot about the mental toughness and maturity of these players, but it also depends on the coaching staff’s ability to keep its team focused and prepared despite outside noise. We’ll see what happens.