KEENE, N.H. - The postseason recognition continues to roll in for Keene State College men's basketball senior Ty Nichols (Springfield, Mass.), who today was named the D3hoops.com Northeast Region Player of the Year and a first-team All New England selection. He will also play in the NABC Division III College Basketball All-Star game this Saturday, March 16 at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Ind., where the national championship game will be played after.
The awards are just more in a long line for Nichols, who averaged 27.4 points per game (third nationally) in a stellar senior season which saw him named the Little East Conference Player of the Year and to the conference's first team, the Little East Tournament's Most Outstanding Player, the LEC Player of the Week eight times, and to the Top 50 list for Small College Basketball's prestigious Bevo Francis Award. He also became Keene State's new all-time leading scorer (2,316 career points) and broke the single-season scoring record (768 points) in the process, which had been held by Al Hicks for more than 40 years.
The 2019 Reese's Division III College All-Star game will take place at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, just ahead of the national championship game at 7:00 p.m. Nichols will be on the team coached by Bob Schlosser, who was the longest tenured and winningest coach in Elizabethtown College men's basketball history and guided the Blue Jays for 27 seasons before retiring following the 2016-17 season. Also on the team with Nichols are fellow New England representatives Bradley Jomard (MIT) and Austin Coene (Roger Williams University). Marcos Echevarria (Nichols College) will be on the team coached by Joe Campoli and rounds out the four New England players selected for the game. A link to watch the contest will be available on d3hoops.com.
Nichols is the first Keene State player to be named the Northeast Region Player of the Year, and joins David Stantial (2002) and Tyler Kathan (2009) as All-New England first team selections. It also marks the third straight year on an all-region team for Nichols, as he was named to the second team last year and the third team in 2017.
The All-Region teams, which are in their 18th year of existence, are formed based upon nominations from Sports Information Directors across each of the eight regions. Nationwide, 716 players were nominated, and upon those nominations, SIDs across the country vote for their specific region.