HAMPTON, Va. – If the Hampton University men's basketball team beats the University of Virginia Tuesday night, head coach Kevin Nickelberry will have done something no other Pirate coach has done at the NCAA Division I level – win more than 15 non-conference games in his first three years at the helm.
Former Hampton coach Bobby Collins holds the current mark at 15. Nickelberry also has 15 non-conference wins in his two-plus seasons at Hampton, and he has four more non-conference games to play this season: Tuesday's tilt at UVA, a road contest after Christmas against Virginia Commonwealth, a home date with Yale and a Jan. 3 contest against visiting Kent State.
All this for a coach enjoying his first head coaching job after a long and decorated career as one of the nation's top assistants. Nickelberry took over before the 2006-07 season. Nickelberry has gone 33-28 in his first two full seasons at Hampton, along with a 20-14 mark in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
“It basically boils down to re-establishing a national reputation,” Nickelberry said. “When I was at UNC-Charlotte and Clemson, Hampton was the sort of school no one wanted to play. I want to bring that back, and it order to do that, you have to beat people.
“That's all it boils down to.”
So far this season, the Pirates are 5-4 overall with a 1-0 mark in the MEAC. Though Hampton is only averaging 59.4 points per game on offense, it is giving up just 62.2 a contest on defense, living out a philosophy Nickelberry implemented in the offseason.
Simply put, defense lives here.
The Pirates finished the 2007-08 season in the top three of the MEAC is every important statistical category. Hampton led the MEAC in field goal percentage defense last season, allowing only 39.8 percent of shots to fall. The Pirates also led the conference in 3-point field goal percentage defense at 28.9 percent. Hampton finished second in steals behind Norfolk State, averaging 8.5 a contest. Former Pirate Rashad West was 10th in the MEAC in steals last season with an average of 1.3 a contest.
Hampton was also nationally-ranked in several defensive categories. Though Hampton's 62.6 points allowed per game were the fourth-best total in the MEAC, that average was 45th best in all of NCAA Division I basketball. The Pirates also finished eighth in the nation in 3-point field goal percentage defense, and they also finished 23rd in overall field goal percentage defense. Hampton was also among the nation's top 50 in steals, coming in 36th. Hampton was also 74th in blocked shots, averaging four a game.
The Road to Hampton
Nickelberry spent three years working with Oliver Purnell at Clemson University, serving primarily as recruiting coordinator and post position coach. Clemson nabbed a top-25 recruiting class in Nickelberry's first year with the Tigers, while Sharod Ford developed into an All-ACC player and Akin Akingbala went from averaging four points a game to 12 points and eight rebounds a contest.
While at Clemson and UNC-Charlotte, Nickelberry was recognized by several basketball outlets as one of the nation's top assistant coaches. Basketball Times, The Hoop Scoop and Rivelhoops.com all listed Nickelberry among the country's top 20 assistant coaches, and the accolades even came from the likes of Sports Illustrated and FOX Sports.
“Wherever he's been,” Seth Davis of CBS Sports and Sports Illustrated once said, “Kevin Nickelberry has proven himself to be one of the brightest young assistant coaches in America. He is energetic, hard-working and charismatic, and has all the requisite qualities to take the next step and become a successful head coach.”
“(He) is clearly one of the best recruiters in the business,” Jeff Goodman of Fox Sports added. “He does a terrific job of connecting with kids and the trust players have, in addition to a keen eye for evaluating talent, make him one of the elite assistant coaches in the country.”
In his two years at UNC-Charlotte, where Nickelberry acted as assistant coach before going to Clemson, Nickelberry earned the 49ers back-to-back top-20 recruiting classes in 2002 and
2003. One of Nickelberry's recruits, Eddie Basden, was named Conference USA Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in 2005, while Curtis Withers was an All-Conference USA selection in 2004 and 2005.
Martin Iti was a Conference USA All-Rookie selection before transferring to Minnesota, where he was an All-Big Ten performer and helped the Gophers reach the NCAA Tournament.
As associate head coach at Holy Cross, Nickelberry helped the Crusaders complete the best turnaround in the program's history (six wins to 27), which included a trip to the NCAA Tournament and Patriot League regular-season and tournament championships. Holy Cross lost to Kentucky and Kansas in their NCAA appearances.
Two Crusaders recruited by Nickelberry won Patriot League Rookie of the Year honors and three were named to the All-Rookie Team. Holy Cross also had two Patriot League Players of the Year during Nickelberry's tenure, while four Crusaders earned conference first team accolades.
Nickelberry recruited a Northeastern Conference Newcomer and Player of the Year while at Monmouth, while his tenure at Howard saw two players named MEAC Rookie of the Year and five players who earned All-Rookie or All-MEAC honors.
“Everywhere I've gone,” Nickelberry said, “teams have made it to the postseason. It may not be immediate – we're talking year three or four – but every team I've been at has gone to the postseason. That's part of building a program.”
The Coaching Tree
After graduating from Virginia Wesleyan College in Virginia Beach in 1986, Nickelberry worked in various public relations and marketing firms. As part of that endeavor, Nickelberry worked with children and such NBA stars as Sam Cassell in the gymnasium on the campus of Columbia Union, an NAIA school. That work led to Columbia Union taking notice, and the school's athletic department approached Nickelberry about coaching.
“Once I got back on the gym,” Nickelberry said, “the juices just started flowing again. It was back in me, and Columbia Union was one of those right time, right place sort of things.”
Nickelberry started in 1990 as an assistant coach with the men's basketball team, also filling in mid-season as the head women's basketball coach. Under Nickelberry's direction, the women's basketball team went from winning one game to competing for postseason play. Meanwhile, the Columbia Union men's team qualified for its first-ever NAIA Tournament.
From there, Mike McGleece called from Howard to offer Nickelberry a coaching position. Nickelberry accepted, though at first he was only a volunteer – not yet willing to turn back from his PR and marketing endeavors, which were successful at the time.
Nickelberry became a full-time assistant at Howard after the first year, making a name for himself as a prime recruiter. That reputation led Nickelberry to Monmouth, where the rest, as Nickelberry said, was history.
At Holy Cross, Nickelberry befriended Ralph Willard, the head coach at the school. That association led to a friendship with Rick Pitino, head coach at Louisville and former coach of the NBA's Boston Celtics. Nickelberry attended Celtics practices during his tenure at Holy Cross, learning schemes and philosophies he still uses to this day.
Purnell, who helped Old Dominion University win the 1975 NCAA Division II national championship as a player, hired Nickelberry from Charlotte, but the association goes back to Nickelberry's days as a student at Virginia Wesleyan. A self-described “really good bench-warmer,” Nickelberry expressed an interest in coaching, going to ODU and meeting Purnell.
“I was basically a 'go-fer' for that program,” Nickelberry said. “Whatever Oliver needed, I did … that got my foot in the door, and years later he hired me at Clemson. Told me I made my own opportunities at Charlotte, but he's kept tabs on me all throughout my career.
“I learned a lot from him, especially as far as building a program.”
Nickelberry also became acquainted with the Valvano family while in college, as he was teammates with Bob Valvano at Virgini Wesleyan. The ESPN college basketball analyst and radio host is the brother of the late Jim Valvano, who guided N.C. State to the 1983 NCAA national championship over Houston. Nickelberry would travel with Bob Valvano to watch Jim coaching the Wolfpack.
“A lot of really good basketball people came from Virginia Wesleyan,” Nickelberry said. “Bob, Winthrop head coach (Randy Peele) … they have a foundation for good basketball.”
Coaching Philosophy
For Nickelberry, building a successful program goes beyond simply winning games and advancing to postseason play – though that is certainly part of the equation. The philosophy that rules Nickelberry as a coach has also fueled his career success as a recruiter, and can be boiled down to one simple question:
“Why not us?”
“I had a lot of offers coming out of Clemson,” Nickelberry, who fielded head coaching offers from Sun belt, Atlantic Sun, Atlantic-10 and Colonial Athletic Association schools, said. “I talked to (Hampton University President) Dr. William R. Harvey, and his idea of what made a successful program as the same as mine.”
Nickelberry wants his non-conference schedule to resemble that of the “BCS schools” – which means several tough mid-major teams and a carefully-selected high-profile program ever year. Instead of trying to load the non-conference slate with heavy-hitting teams, Nickelberry prefers mirroring his schedule to those of the BCS programs.
That philosophy bleeds over into recruiting, where Nickelberry's approach is simple: “I want players who shouldn't be here.” Instead of bringing in the same caliber of talent that was already coming into a particular program, Nickelberry strived to bring in a better athlete, the sort that could take the program to the next level.
Nickelberry's first two recruiting classes were ranked in the top 60 nationally. Junior guard Michael Freeman (Alexandria, Va.) was a Top 50 player coming out of Brewster Academy, the first time the Pirates have pulled in a player that highly touted coming out of high school.
“It's about making the kids believe,” Nickelberry said. “Just show them that I've done this sort of thing before, and I know what it takes to get it done. This business is all about people. This is a people sport … good coaches are going to win no matter where they go, because they surround themselves with people who believe in what they do.
“It's all about turning that dream into reality.”
