After mental and physical struggles forced Tristan Clark’s retirement, the ex-Baylor star opens up about returning with SMU

In the week leading up to last month’s Final Four, Tristan Clark received a call from Baylor head coach Scott Drew.

Nearly every day in March, Clark had been to an old high school gym in San Antonio to shoot around and work out. To the world, he was no longer a basketball player. His days as a player for Drew were over.

He’d felt forced to publicly relinquish that identity four months prior when he retired because of a yearslong debilitating knee injury that caused physical pain and the emotional turmoil.

Drew — preparing for the most important games in the program’s history — wanted to make sure Clark would be there for whatever came next. Baylor wasn’t technically his team anymore, but Clark was still a part of that program. He was part of how they’d gotten to that point.

So he booked Clark a ticket to Indianapolis. Got him a hotel room. Invited him to Lucas Oil Stadium. And then gave him a chance to celebrate the national championship run he’d so badly wanted to be a part of.

“It’s just an amazing feeling, because I battled with them for so many years,” Clark said. “I’ve seen the work they put in. I know what type of competitors those guys are. To be a part of that is a special, special feeling.”

Clark played just a season and a half for the Bears before his injury. In the first 14 games of the 2018-19 season, he was one of the most dominant players in the country. He led the nation with a .737 field goal percentage and had 34 blocks in those 14 games.

Then he had a meniscus tear in his left knee that forced him to miss the rest of that season. When he returned in 2019-20, he was a shell of his former self. Then, before this past season in November 2020, he retired from the sport.

Six months later, though, Clark feels rehabilitated. He feels like the player he was before the injury. After entering the transfer portal, he decided he’ll play his final season with SMU. He’ll graduate from Baylor in July and go to Dallas for the fall semester. It’s what he hopes will be a jump-start to a long, healthy future in the sport.

“He’s happier. It was just a lot on him, this injury,” said his mother, Maggie Simpson. “He’d never had to overcome any obstacles like that.”

It was difficult for Clark to rehab after the 2019-20 season was shut down due to COVID-19. He wasn’t able to get on the court. He wasn’t able to see trainers as easily.

He actually got a stem cell procedure done in the summer of 2020 that helped him feel better. He said they took blood from his hip bone, mixed it with medicine and put it in his knee.

Still, by the time November rolled around, he didn’t feel like he was ready to play. And he didn’t want to repeat the season before when he was only able to play 13 minutes a game. He didn’t want to be a fraction of what he’d proved he could be.

“It’s hard to come back and do it again,” Drew said. “And the great thing is, over time, his body’s gotten better. He’s been able to physically recover more. But also, the season’s a grind. And recovering from injuries is a mental grind. That’s hard to do.”

The mental aspect of his injury was just as debilitating as the physical. There were still periods of continued swelling. He said he didn’t know if he could go hard. Some days his knee was good, other days it was bad. Most important, though, basketball had been so ingrained in his identity that life without it presented an unknown.

He said he didn’t want him or his injury to be a distraction to the team. “I put a lot of pressure on myself,” Clark said. “I’m very competitive. I push myself a lot, and I can be my biggest critic. I can bring myself down. I had to learn how to not do that as bad and control my thoughts.”

He wanted to come to SMU because he was being recruited directly by head coach Tim Jankovich. The fact that the head coach recruited him was why he went to Baylor years ago, and this process played out similarly.

There was no longer a scholarship available for him at Baylor. But once he entered the portal, there were several teams interested. Many wanted to get confirmation on his medical situation, but he was sought after. He eventually chose SMU over Miami.

In addition to Jankovich’s efforts, he liked the experienced nature of the Mustangs roster. He also heard from Zach Nuttall, who transferred to SMU this offseason, and star guard Kendric Davis, whom he said would definitely be back on the Mustangs roster next year.

“The players that are coming in, I like what I see,” Clark said. “I feel like we can do something very special next year. … On paper we look like a tournament team and a team that could potentially go to a Final Four.” If that did happen, it would be Clark’s second Final Four. The first didn’t happen as he imagined it would

While his team was waking up in the NCAA Tournament bubble — among the favorites to win it all — Clark was hitting up his high school coach, Rodney Clark, to let him in the gym.

He’d shoot around in the morning. Then he’d go lift weights. It didn’t have the same pomp and circumstance as March Madness, but he was preparing for something important.

“The first day he came to work out … he was like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to try it again,’” Rodney Clark said. “The first day he came into the gym is when I knew it.”

A couple of weeks later, he was in Indianapolis with his former teammates. Then he was with the team in the championship parade through the streets in Waco. He held the trophy proudly. As he said, he was a part of that championship’s foundation. In that sense, he’d earned that moment.

He’s going to SMU with the same goal in mind. But with the Mustangs, he wants to be more than just a part of the foundation. He wants to be a player on a team that makes history.

“Time has shown him just how much he missed basketball,” Drew said. “And missed daily being around the team. As we all know in life, when something’s taken away and is no longer there, you appreciate it that much more. And I think definitely Tristan’s in that camp.

“We all know what Tristan’s capable of when he’s healthy.”

+++

Find more SMU coverage from The Dallas Morning News here.