PROVO — One was present and accounted for.
The other was not.
Just in time for nothing, BYU senior Dalton Nixon made it back. He’s skipping around, jumping, shooting, running, being his old self. Go find him in a pickup game in a gym — if allowed to gather by 10 bodies — and he’ll kick some butt.
The medical game plan called for the injured Nixon to sit out and heal so when the NCAA Tournament time came around this past week, he’d rejoin ranked BYU and make a dash at the Big Dance.
Well, the NCAA Tournament didn’t come around.
But Nixon did.
It’s now moot as ribeye in a crowded Texas Roadhouse.
Nixon suffered a rare double ankle sprain during a game at Loyola Marymount in Gertsten Pavillion on Feb. 13. A few days later, head coach Mark Pope label Nixon “the heart and soul” of the Cougar basketball team with a hope of getting Nixon back for the West Coast Tournament in March. He couldn’t make it back in that time frame.
For all time, folks will wonder how far as Pope’s team may have gone if the Big Dance had been spared this week.
BYU could have been one and done, as in the WCC tournament, or found reserves and made a run.
In Las Vegas at the WCC, BYU was not only without Nixon, but did not have the services of starter Kolby Lee, who was extremely ill and dehydrated and did not suit up in that buzzer beater loss to Saint Mary’s.
Former BYU forward Kevin Nixon said his son Dalton would have played this past week in the NCAA first round.
The Cougars were expected to leave last Tuesday for either Spokane, Albany, Tampa or St. Louis for a first-round regional as at least a No. 6 seed. They would have played a Thursday game and a win would have advanced them to a Saturday contest in the second round.
Dalton Nixon would have played minutes the team had been anticipating for more than a month.
If so, and he was productive, that would have been huge. Nixon was a key part of BYU’s undefeated February and nine straight wins.
“Yes, he would have played,” said Kevin Nixon this past week.
“He was cleared to run and do on-court work last Wednesday. He would have practiced Saturday and had a full practice on Monday. Yesterday, (Wednesday, March 18) we went to the park and he ran routes and I threw footballs to him. He looked great. Sad he couldn’t play again after the injury.”
Nixon was kind of symbolic of Pope’s first year as BYU’s head coach.
Nixon seemingly went through a transformation as a defensive player and rebounder and increased his 3-point shooting accuracy under Pope. He gained a serious position as a role player and, along with Zac Seljaas and Connor Harding, became far more engaged as defensive athletes.
All this came a full season after Nixon made a long-tough comeback from major shoulder surgery after the 2018 season when he received a freak injury in the closing minutes of the WCC Championship game against Gonzaga at the Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. When the team played Stanford in the first round of the NIT, Nixon had shoulder surgery.
A kind of rebuilt, recycled, reengergized player, Nixon put on a show this past year under Pope. He was kind of the story of the entire team, a kind of phoenix story. Take TJ Haws, Seljaas, Childs, a transfer in Alex Barcello, and each and every one of them had their own retread story that came together for a common team cause.
And that will be one of the most impressive things about the work Pope and his staff did in 2020.
Take just one of Nixon’s statistics and put it on a graphic line. It climbed like the pre-virus American economy.
As a 3-point shooter, Nixon made 8 of 18 (.167) as a freshman. He was 5 of 21 from distance as a sophomore (.238), and 1 of 16 (.063) in his junior year.
Under the new regime, Nixon finishes his senior year 24 of 64 for 36% accuracy from deep. His confidence, skill level and motivation was as high as any point in his college career when he crashed into the stanchion at LMU.
But he made it back.
Trouble is, the college game didn’t make it back for his comeback.