Nichols has gotten 'physical' to climb atop the 'Cats scoring list

DEXTER – With each basket and/or free throw that Dexter High School senior guard Cole Nichols makes for the remainder of his phenomenal career over the next few weeks, he is going to etch his name in the lore of Bearcat basketball over and over again.

The 6-foot-2 athlete passed former Dexter great, Brett Hale, last Friday against Kennett, to become the Bearcats’ all-time leading scorer, and now has 1,831 points heading into tonight’s SEMO Conference game at Poplar Bluff (7:30 p.m.).

Hale will return to his alma mater on Thursday when the Bearcats battle Stoddard County foe Advance (7:30 p.m.) at the Bearcat Event Center for a ceremony recognizing Nichols AND Hale. But in the meantime, Nichols is going to distance himself with each point, and like the other points, none will come easy.

“He’s been physical,” fourth-year Dexter coach Chad Allen said of Nichols. “He was really strong as a freshman. I think that is part of it. He is just sort of naturally strong.”

There are a lot of ways in which a player can score in basketball, but it does seem like Nichols has the propensity to make baskets AFTER he has been hit, shoved, or leveled to a certain degree.

“He has always kind of had a nose for the basket,” Bearcat assistant coach Rob Nichols said of his oldest son. “He knows how to get skinny in gaps and get through them. He can shoot the basketball, but it is important as a point guard to try and get to the free-throw line. That can do a lot of things in a game if you can get the bonus and get to the free throw line.”

Nichols has made his share of free throws, as well as open 3-pointers, but anyone that has watched him through the years has marveled at his ability to draw contact, but THEN remained focused on the basket.

He has a unique ability to be able to square his shoulders after contact and still finish the shot or play, even though he may have just gotten crushed.

“We basically practice that way,” Allen said of teaching physicality to his players. “I tell my second team that I am not going to call a foul. I tell them to do whatever they can to get the ball from them.

“It is extremely physical in our practices.”

As Allen noted, Nichols has been a physically strong player since his younger days, but that wasn’t happenstance.

Cole is a kid who has had to work to become the most prolific scorer in his school’s history.

He isn’t 6-foot-6, and Nichols doesn’t have a 45-inch vertical jump.

Time and effort are how his story unfolded.

“I have always coached (at Dexter),” Rob said, “and there was not a time that I came to the gym that he didn’t want to come too. There wasn’t a game that he didn’t want to go to. And there is not a practice that he ever missed.

“From the time that he could walk until now, he has always just loved the game and he works. He has worked really hard at it.”