Culture and Staff attract hometown Nichols to Kent State

Jonas Nichols is used to winning, and he’s used to doing it in a family environment with a staff that cares about the entire person, not just the basketball player.  The 6-4 wing committed to Kent State and signed back on November 8 of 2023 and it figures to be a very good fit for both sides.  

The Archbishop Hoban product ultimately chose the Flashes over several scholarship offers he had.  From the Mid-American Conference, Akron, Eastern Michigan, Bowling Green, Ball State, Miami, Ohio and Toledo offered him a chance to play.  Also, Penn State and Richmond were in the mix to land the services of this dynamic guard.  Nichols had narrowed his choices to Kent State and Penn State, and when Micah Shrewsberry took the Notre Dame job before the 2023-2024 season, the choice was clear, Nichols was transitioning from the Hoban Knights blue and gold to the Kent State Golden Flashes.

“Ultimately I chose Kent because of the environment and the winning culture.  The one thing I really loved is how all the coaches played at Kent.  I loved that family environment.”

The main recruiter of Nichols and the coach that he got especially close with was Jon Fleming.  The assistant coach and walk-on player at Kent was invaluable to Coach Rob Senderoff as a player, providing his insight, and is very fast becoming Kent State’s next star coach and recruiter.

“Me and Jon are very close.  He is also one of the main reasons I’m coming to Kent,” Nichols told Golden Flash Report.  “We grew comfortable with each other because he showed me himself outside of basketball and we connected like that.  He also was checking with me every day about my grades.”

Nichols struggled in the classroom his freshman year at Hoban and didn’t take it as seriously as he needed to.  

“The turning point was that I wouldn’t be able to play sports in college, ever since my coach told me that I started applying myself in the classroom!”

That coach was Hoban Head Coach T.K. Griffith.

“Jonas has led us to the most successful era of Hoban basketball by putting in more work outside of scheduled practice than any other player I have coached,” Griffith said in a KSU Athletics Department release in November.  “He’s a gym rat and has become like a son to many of us in the building. I am so proud of his recent GPA for the first quarter where he reached the Summa Cum Laude honor roll.”

Nichols, who plans to major in either Sport Administration or Business Administration, is in the same mold of a lot of Kent State guards of the past.  Not a pure point guard, not a shooting guard, just a perimeter player capable of doing a lot, and playing a lot of positions.  He’s part of a revamped Flashes backcourt full of size, length and versatility.

Nichols led Hoban to a state title his junior year during the 2022-2023 season, where some of his best high school memories came at Kent State.  Hoban defeated St. Edward and Walsh Jesuit in regional games at the MAC Center in Kent. 

“Kent plans to use me as a scorer and someone that will do whatever to help the team win,” Nichols said.  “For someone that hasn’t seen me play I bring buckets, good energy and like I said, I can do whatever we need to grind out a win but every night I’m going 100%.  Winning is the most important thing because if you win nobody can deny you anything, so I plan to continue that at Kent State.”