The Bobcat Nation

I heard earlier today that the Bobcat basketball staff has received a commitment from Tre Nichols who played this past year at McLennan Community College in Texas. Nichols signed with Texas State out of high school and played for them his freshman year before moving on to McLennan CC this past year. Nichols is listed as a 6-0 (that might be very generous) point guard, but is not a true point. He might be considered the favorite term of coaches right now a “combo guard”. We used to call that a scoring point guard.

In high school he was a very highly touted point guard out of Killeen High School in Killeen Texas. He committed early to Texas State and then saw his stock rise considerably his senior year. He was receiving interest from Baylor, Texas Tech, Rice and Houston, but he decided to honor his commitment to Texas State. During his senior year he averaged 20 points, 4 rebounds, 4 steals and 5 assists a game all garnering all conference awards. Scout.com and Rivals both had him rated as a 2 star prospect.

Here is what Texashoops.com had to say about Tre his senior year.

Texas Hoops Analysis: TRE is a very quick and fast point guard who loves to push the ball in the open court. He sees up the floor very well, makes good decisions on the break and gets it to players where they can score. He can break down the defense at anytime, has a soft touch in the paint, can find teammates in traffic and can pull-up for the 15-17 footer. He plays the game at full speed and loves to use his hands and feet on the defensive end.

Nichols played as a true freshman for Texas State, but decided to enroll at McLennan and look to hook up with another D-1 team for the 2010-11 season. This season for McLennan, Nichols started out kind of slow but got it going as the season progressed. Nichols averaged 13 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals a game while shooting 48% from the field 39% from beyond the three point line and 89% from the free throw line for the season. During his conference season though his scoring average was 16 points a game. For his efforts he was named North Texas Junior College All-Conference first team.

McLennan Community College finished the season with a 26-4 record, and they should place 5 players in the D-1 ranks this spring.

So he will be a... junior?

CelticCat wrote:So he will be a... junior?

Sorry yes he will be a sophomore next year.

Rivals gave him 2 stars when he signed with TSU.

Apparently BSU's new coach has poached Mr. Nichols:

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/04/0 ... cruit.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

He better pray BSU doesn't come to play us again in Bozeman.

Probably better for MSU in the long run. He obviously has some issues.

Let's see - so this is a guy who didn't make it through a full year at Texas State, then went to a JC, (reportedly) committed to MSU and then changed his mind a week later to go to Boise? Doesn't sound like the kind of player you'd have a whole lot of confidence in, to be honest. Perhaps it is for the best that MSU move on and get someone else who really wants to be here.

This is one of those "oh well" kind of situations. I think MSU has played Boise State all of the last four years, with three of those at Boise. They're due for a trip to Bozeman. We don't have to boo him or anything, just show him convincingly what he is missing by not coming here. We can find a more stable 4 year guy instead, and that could work out quite well in the long run.

This is still Coach Huses best class even with the loss of Nichols. There are some freshmen coming in that can give us valuable playing time.

The coaches will sign another JC guard to replace Nichols. It will be a crap shoot as to whether he will be as good as Nichols or not. What really hurts in these situations is that after a prospect commits you stop recruiting other players for hat spot. Now you have to pick up the ball again and sometimes the other players you have been recruiting have made other plans by the time you pick back up on them.

BSU had signed a different JC Point Guard from Texas and he wanted out with the coaching change. His name is CJ Kupets and was quite the high school scorer in Georgia.