Honestly, I feel I was right about Nicholson as a sophomore. He was buried behind Nance and Young and Coach Collins had this weird notion that Beran deserved playing time over Young - and he especially liked playing Nance with Beran, which was not good at all. I looked at the numbers and concluded Collins was not getting as much out of his roster as he should be. I think he was shuffling 11 guys - which struck me as confusion. Beran and Nance spent a lot of time at the 3 point arc. I thought we needed some size in the paint - because guys like Kofi Cockburn were just destroying us. I wanted Nance at the 4 some/much of the time. And Nicholson was a beast who spent his time on the bench shooting air pistols when something good happened. The road game at Michigan State when Nance was sick and Young and Nicholson kicked the Spartans' asses - that confirmed it for me. But Collins ignored that result and went right back to what he had been doing. And we lost too many games. I expressed my deep concerns that the unappreciated Nicholson would (and probably should) transfer somewhere else after his sophomore year. People laughed. Instead, Nance and Young both left.
Nicholson's junior year we were supposed to suck and Collins was then going to be fired. I think Gragg had written his dismissal announcement. But nobody realized that Chris Lowery was going to have a significant impact on NU's fortunes. Everybody played better defense immediately... Buie, Audige, Beran improved. Nicholson and Barnhizer were massive defensive upgrades over their predecessors. And even though we couldn't score, we won games - and Nicholson (and Verhoeven) had a lot to do with that.
I used to write about the quality of Nicholson's screens, how he sealed off the opposing big to enable our scorers to get to the basket. I wrote early on that he was a pretty good passer and handled the ball fairly well out on the perimeter. He was good at that stuff as a junior and made incremental improvement. You may recall me complaining regularly that Collins had the team switching 1-5 and that made Nicholson work too hard, running all over the perimeter, getting worn down. Eventually we stopped doing that.
After his junior year, I thought for certain that he'd come back as a senior with a couple of post moves. I even suggested hiring a specialist to work with him on the fundamentals of using his body to create space to score in the paint and to get more rebounds.
He came back heavier - and thats about it. Thankfully, he and Buie got the ball screens perfected - and they had some chemistry/timing on the pick and roll and whenever Buie got into the paint. But as an individual scorer he had gone nowhere.
Coming into this season, it was more of the same. Somehow, despite the obvious necessity of teaching Nicholson how to catch the ball with his back to he basket, turn and score - it hasn't happened. And he still doesn't really know how to get rebounding position.
