By Nick Mazzarella — STAFF WRITER
Hofstra men’s basketball senior forward Malik Nichols will miss the rest of the 2015-16 season with a knee injury, the university’s department of athletics announced on Tuesday, Jan. 26.
A day before the official announcement, Nichols — whose college basketball career is now over — broke the news on his Instagram page.
The injury occurred on Sunday, Jan. 24, against William & Mary on a play in which Nichols converted on a wide-open dunk. After staying down for a little while, he was helped to the locker room and, at least initially, did not any pressure on his left leg.
With the loss of its sixth man in Nichols, Hofstra’s depth is further diminished as the Pride now have only one bench player who averages more than 10 minutes per game (true freshman Desure Buie, 12.4 MPG).
“It’s real simple — we can’t get tired, we can’t foul, and we can’t get hurt,” said head coach Joe Mihalich when asked about his team’s depth situation.
The other two members of the three-man bench — Andre Walker and Justin Wright-Foreman — average 4.3 and 3.8 minutes per game, respectively. Because of Nichols’ injury, the bench players’ minutes may or may not increase. In a 66-64 home win over Elon on Thursday — Hofstra’s first game following Nichols’ injury — Buie logged 17 minutes, Walker five, and Wright-Foreman two.
“We’re just going to need to get Desure Buie some more minutes,” said Mihalich, who then went on to say the staff needs to “force feed” some minutes to Wright-Foreman and get Walker into the game (the latter of which is tough, Mihalich said, because of how well Rokas Gustys is playing).
Nichols is a high-energy player who provided a spark off the bench for the Pride. The defensive-minded Rockaway Beach, New York native didn’t necessarily fill the stat sheet (5.2 points and 5.4 rebounds per game), but he did things that don’t show up in the box score. Perhaps most importantly, he was a big body who was available to come off the bench — and now Hofstra has only one of those.
In the postgame press conference following the win versus Elon, Mihalich wasted no time mentioning Nichols, who can now only cheer on his teammates from the sideline.
“To get the first one without him is really important because he’s a big part of our team,” he said.
Hofstra’s first game without Nichols against a team whose CAA record is above .500 will take place on Thursday, Feb. 4. The Pride (15-6, 7-2 CAA) host UNC-Wilmington (15-5, 7-2 CAA) in what will be — as of right now — a battle between two teams tied for first place in the conference.