Prerequisites to becoming a college coach must include a strong stomach. Otherwise, how could anybody tolerate the disappointment of losing a targeted recruit to another program and seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of man-hours go for naught?
Then sometimes you get lucky.
Colorado State men’s basketball coach Tim Miles never tires of telling the story about how guard Adam Nigon “just showed up one day and said he wanted to be a member of this team” as a walk-on.
That was three years ago, when the newly hired Miles wondered if he would even have enough players to conduct a decent practice following the inevitable player defections that follow a coaching change.
Talk about a godsend. A fourth-year junior from Broomfield, the 6-foot-3 Nigon (pronounced nigh-gone) has become a full-time starter, averaging 8.6 points and three rebounds. He ranks second on the team in assists and leads in steals and floor burns. Miles doesn’t know where his team would be without Nigon, an inspirational leader and annoying defender. Nigon is now on scholarship.
“Adam epitomizes everything I value in a college player,” Miles said. “There’s always room for guys that play with passion and put the team before themselves.”
As a senior at Broomfield High, Nigon averaged only about 10 points and didn’t even get a sniff from RMAC programs. Rather than accept offers from Division III schools out of state, Nigon decided to follow older sisters to CSU and become a regular student.
He played intramural hoops during the 2006-07 school year before walking on with the Rams when he heard Miles needed bodies. The first step was playing summertime pickup games with CSU players.
“I just tried to go hard every day,” Nigon recalled. “I’d never played against 7-footers before, but I wanted to show that I wasn’t intimidated.”
Miles calls Nigon “a self-made player” who finds ways to improve every day. Nigon averaged just 2.9 points during his first two seasons at CSU but now contributes at both ends. “When I came in, defense was really all I had,” Nigon said. “I didn’t have much of an offensive game. I’ve developed some things.”
Count UNLV coach Lon Kruger among his fans.
“Adam has all the intangibles and is a really good player,” Kruger said. “It reinforces that recruiting is an inexact science.”
Suits and sneakers.
Denver men’s coach Joe Scott and his staff will wear sneakers instead of dress shoes for today’s home game against South Alabama in support of the “Coaches vs. Cancer Suits and Sneakers” initiative, a collaborative effort of the American Cancer Society and the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
Tough break.
Wyoming’s leading scorer, sophomore forward Afam Muojeke, will have season-ending knee surgery next week. He ruptured the patellar tendon in his left knee in the first half of Wednesday’s loss to BYU.
The 6-foot-7 Muojeke, last season’s freshman of the year in the Mountain West, this year was averaging 16.8 points, third in the MWC.
Footnotes.
Oklahoma State senior guard Andrea Riley is only 5-feet-5 but will be a tall order for Colorado on Sunday in Boulder. Riley averages 25.9 points for the 12th-ranked Cowgirls and is on pace to set break the Big 12 record for single-season scoring average set in 1997 by Alicia Thompson (23.6) of Texas Tech. . . . has Northern Colorado ranked No. 12 in its men’s mid-major top 25. deserves props for considering the Mountain West, Western Athletic, Atlantic-10 and Conference USA to be a level above “mid-major,” and the website does not include teams of those conferences in the ranking.
Tom Kensler covers college basketball. Contact: 303-954-1280 or tkensler@denverpost.com
