The Nicholls men’s basketball season ended last week with a second-round exit from the Southland Conference tournament in an 88-72 loss to the Northwestern State University Demons.
The Colonels (14-15, 10-8 in Southland Conference play) exceeded expectations as they finished fifth in the conference during the regular season. The Southland’s preseason conference coach’s poll predicted that Nicholls would finish fifth in the league. Because of their fifth place finish, Nicholls was awarded the highest seed in the first round of the Southland Conference tournament last week in Katy, Texas, where they faced 8th-seed Southeastern Louisiana University. The Southland Conference tournament is an eight-team tournament where the 3rd and 4th seeds get a one-round bye and the 1st and 2nd seeds receive a two-round bye.
“We obviously thought we could do a little better than that, but I think that qualifies as exceeding expectations,” Head coach J.P. Piper said. “Getting into the conference tournament, winning a game and also having a winning record in conference, all of those things were not necessarily forgone conclusions at the beginning of the year. I thought overall it was a good year.”
The Colonels are set to lose their two leading scorers as senior guards Dantrell Thomas and Jeremy Smith, who averaged 15.9 and 13.9 points per game respectively. The team will also lose guard Pedro Maciel, who appeared in 24 games this season. However, Piper believes that the group of players returning will be able to step up and fill in for those leaving.
“We have a lot of work to do there. We have guys in the program that are going to need to step up and we are going to have to address some of that in recruiting,” Piper said. “Every year, we’ve lost good players and managed to cover it up the following year. Back to Anatoly Bose and Fred Hunter. It just means that it is someone else’s opportunity to step up.”
Piper said, “I like the guys we have coming back, and I’m not going to prejudge who that’s going to be that has to step up, but they’ll understand that that needs to happen. They’ll understand that needs to happen and I’m sure there are guys who are going to want to do that.”
With wins trending upward over the past two seasons, Piper hopes that the team will continue to improve on their record in the 2014-15 campaign, but he knows it will take a returning player stepping in to fill the shoes left behind by the seniors to accomplish that.
“I believe that we need to do that. I always find myself right after the season kind of wondering how am I going to replace Dantrell and Jeremy and their scoring and what they did for us with their leadership. But then we start practicing and working the guys out and some of the other players start changing their responsibilities and their roles,” Piper said. “It’s only when you start to see players develop and your team changing and you get excited about the future with your next team.”
Piper has higher expectations for next season as the Colonels continue to build on their successes from this year.
“I think the goal has to be that we want to do better than 10-8 in the league, and we want to win more than one game in Katy, Texas, and I believe that our players believe that they can do that,” Piper said. “Obviously, it’s going to require a lot of work, but I don’t see us shying away from that either. We’ll get to work on that as soon as we can.”