Long Beach State University Athletics
Nixon Has a Long Road to Long Beach
1/25/2006 12:00:00 AM | General
Nixon Takes Long Route to LBSU "I get 'Do you play football?" all the time from people," Nixon said, breaking into a smile late Tuesday afternoon in the Walter Pyramid, after he and his Long Beach State basketball teammates had finished practice, roughly four days from the most significant game during Coach Larry Reynolds' three-plus years as the program's head coach. It will be Big West Conference leader UC Irvine taking on the second-place 49ers, who will take 4-2 and 9-8 conference and overall records into the 5 o'clock showdown in the Walter Pyramid Saturday. If the 49ers are successful in extending their winning streak to four in a row and chipping away at the Anteaters' conference advantage, it will likely be in large part because of the play of Nixon. A transfer from San Bernardino Valley College who played two seasons ago as a freshman at Columbus State Community College (in Columbus, Ohio), Nixon is averaging 13.1 points, 4.1 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game. Those certainly are anything but eye-popping stats but his contributions to the 49ers can not be deciphered strictly by way of numbers on a box score. In an era when basketball players are pigeon-holed as "point guards", "off" or "shooting" guards, "wings" or "small forwards", "power forwards or "four men", "centers" or "five men", Nixon can best be described as a "basketball player". "We just kind of figure out where we need him, and put him there," Reynolds said. Indeed. He's skilled enough with the basketball in his hands, as a handler, passer and shooter, to play a traditional "guard's" role but also has the back-to-the-basket savvy, strength, explosiveness and moxie to mix it up regularly in the lane or along the baseline with much taller players. Pick-up games with his dad (James Nixon, who played at the University of Southern Illinois), uncles and cousins in his hometown of Cleveland provided the foundation and also ladled on all of those aforementioned skills to that base. It was in those sessions that Aaron Nixon learned to ask and give no quarter on the court, even if it was his dad, uncle or cousin involved in the equation. And it was there that he picked up all of the tricks of the trade involved in getting a shot up and over or around a taller and stronger defender. "I started playing with them when I was in the second grade," the first-semester honor roll member (with a 3.0-plus GPA) and Black Studies major said. They didn't exactly treat him with figurative kid gloves. "Nah, they didn't show me any love," he added, his smile infrequently sighted on the court growing wider. "They taught me about being physical. Cry? No. I never did that because I knew it wouldn't do me any good. It would just get me into trouble, so I just kept playing." Nixon, at about 6-1 ("I was this tall when I was in ninth grade; I kept waiting for the growth spurt; I'm still waiting," he said, laughing), spent his senior season as the Cleveland Heights High center. "We actually had a couple of 6-9 guys," he said. "But they couldn't get their grades together to get eligible." Later that summer, he attended an "exposure camp" (for college recruiters) at Akron East High, some 30 minutes from his home. There he met Anthony Stewart, at the time an assistant coach at Columbus State (Columbus is about two hours from Cleveland), who was watching the on-court action. It was the beginning of a relationship that changed the course of his basketball and academic future. Stewart met Nixon's parents, who almost immediately took a liking to Stewart and eventually learned to trust him enough to allow Aaron to relocate to Columbus and, a couple of years later, California. Nixon spent a year on campus attending classes, without playing, in order to qualify for a scholarship, and then became a third-team All-America at Columbus State. When Columbus State head coach Anthony Golston resigned to focus on being the school's athletic director, and Stewart accepted an offer to join Reynolds staff at Long Beach State, Nixon decided it was time to make another move. "I told my mom I wanted to go out to California, too, and go to a junior college in California (before enrolling at Long Beach, where another former Columbus State player, Shawn Hawkins, had enrolled)," he said. Stewart said that his job offer from Reynolds wasn't attached to his being able to help convince Nixon one of the most heavily touted JC prospects in the country to eventually become a 49er. "I asked Aaron, 'Are you sure this is what you want to do?" Stewart said. "And he said 'Can you find me a place out there?"' His parents wasted little time in giving the thumbs up to the move. "They trust Coach Stewart and so do I," Nixon said. "He's one of those people who might not always tell you what you want to hear, but he always tells you what you need to know." Nixon enrolled at San Bernardino Valley College, where he spent his sophomore season earning first-team All-State honors for Coach Phil Mathews, a long-time friend of Reynolds (who had been an assistant on Mathews' staff when he was the head coach at the University of San Francisco), and completing work for his Associate of Arts degree. San Bernardino and Colton (where he lived) didn't quite fit the image of beach-front living that Nixon who had never been to California before assumed everyone in Southern California was exposed to. "Yeah," he said, the smile slowly returning, "that took some adjustment." But he had no problem playing for Mathews, the very definition of a "no-nonsense"-type of coach whose verbal instruction and critiques can be liberally sprinkled with the kind of words that at one time might have earned a movie an "R" rating. "That didn't bother me at all, and he taught me a lot about basketball, especially on defense," Nixon said. Nixon's first-year experience in Southern California went so well that his parents gave his younger brother, Alex, the OK to make the move, too. He's playing for Cerritos College. Their parents made their first visit recently. What did they think? "They thought it was real cool," Aaron said. "Cool" is not a word Big West defenders will not use often in describing their hookups with the Long Beach player whose skills, and physical dimensions, defy categorization. "That guy is so tough to guard," UC Riverside assistant coach Vonn Webb said Saturday, after Nixon helped the 49ers to their third consecutive road win. "He's almost impossible to match up with." To that, Nixon can think back to some long afternoons and evenings in Cleveland as a youngster where he said the same thing oh-so-often. |
|
|
Copyrighted by Long Beach State and www.longbeachstate.com. All rights reserved worldwide.
No portion of this site may be reproduced or duplicated without the express written Please contact the webmaster should you find an error or out of date link.
