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There have been so many athletic facility renovations at Nicholls State University in the past five years that it’s hard to keep up with it all unless you patrol the campus on a day-to-day basis.
But we do know this – the next project just may be to build a bigger trophy case in the women’s basketball locker room.
Because, we have it on good information that the current Colonels’ case is getting fuller by the minute after the successes the team has had in the past couple weeks.
The Colonels won big this past weekend when the Louisiana Sportswriter Association announced their 2017-18 end of season awards for basketball.
Nicholls hit the jackpot twice with junior guard Cassidy Barrios winning State Player of the Year and coach DoBee Plaisance taking home Coach of the Year honors for the second time in her career.
Barrios beat out LSU guard Raigyne Louis for this honor, scoring 12 first-place votes for the award, compared to Louis’ 7.
Plaisance earned Coach of the Year with 12 votes – enough to outlast Grambling coach Freddie Murray and LSU-Shreveport coach Matt Cross’ 9 apiece.
The wins are the final icing on the cake for Nicholls, which had its best season in program history, posting 19 wins, winning the Southland Conference and making it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history, before falling to Mississippi State, which ended up finishing as the National Runner-Up.
“It’s so important that these kids understand this; we’ve seen success this year, but success is not what it’s all about. It’s about being significant,” Plaisance said after the team’s final game of the season. “When you’re successful, it’s about an entity or yourself. When you’re significant, you’re making a difference. I am so enamored to be working with these incredible group of women. I really feel they were significant and they made a difference. At the end of the day, that’s all I really ask them to do.”
And they delivered for their coach and Barrios was a huge factor in that success.
Barrios earned State Player of the Year honors. She had a truly unbelievable season for Nicholls – dominating statistically throughout the year – enough to also earn Southland Conference Player of the Year.
Barrios averaged 17.3 points and 9.1 rebounds per game for Nicholls, playing in the low-post for necessity for the team, despite being a guard out of high school.
A Raceland native and Vandebilt Catholic graduate, Barrios also set the Nicholls single-season program records for steals and blocks, getting 95 takeaways and 48 swats on the season.
Barrios also was among the NCAA’s leaders in double-doubles with 16 and she was in the Top 10 in the Southland Conference in scoring, rebounds, field goal percentage, assists, free throw percentage, steals, 3-point percentage and blocks – which made her a shoe-in to win the conference’s Player of the Year award.
Barrios also led the Colonels in every, single major statistical category except assists.
“What more can you say about her except that she’s just a terrific player, a terrific person and just a great leader for our team and a great example of what a great Nicholls State University Colonel women’s basketball player should be,” Plaisance said during an interview this season. “She’s come in and she’s always worked hard and competed and given her best effort and you just see it on the court. She’s doing so much of everything to help our team succeed.”
She’s also gotten some great coaching along the way from the State Coach of the Year, as well.
This past season was Plaisance’s 10th at Nicholls and it may have been her best piece of coaching to date for a Colonels program that has gradually risen from the floor to the ceiling of the standings in her time in Thibodaux.
The Colonels faced adversity this season.
They were not picked to finish near the top of the Southland standings in the preseason and the team opened the year just 1-4 in its first five games.
In Southland play, Nicholls started 3-2, but then had to endure its roughest patch of the season, losing four-straight games – almost all lopsided defeats.
Those losses dropped the team to 3-6 in conference and made reaching the Southland Conference Tournament at all a question mark.
But the Colonels battled back.
Nicholls won 62-61 at UNO on Feb. 3 after Barrios made 3 free throws with less than a second on the clock.
After that win, the Colonels got red-hot and finished the season 8-1 to carry the No. 4 seed into the Southland Conference Tournament.
While there, Nicholls beat Texas A&M – Corpus Christi, Lamar and Stephen F. Austin – all in consecutive days to secure the automatic NCAA Tournament bid. All three of those teams had beaten Nicholls during the season.
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