Recruiting Report: Nikki Derrell, PG, Sand Creek 2021
As a 5-foot-3 point guard, Nikki Derrell Nikki Derrell 5'3" | PG Sand Creek | 2021 State CO might be small but she has never let her height hold her back on the basketball court. Derrell knows, as does anyone…
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Continue ReadingAs a 5-foot-3 point guard, Nikki Derrell Nikki Derrell 5'3" | PG Sand Creek | 2021 State CO might be small but she has never let her height hold her back on the basketball court.
Derrell knows, as does anyone who has seen her play, that she might just be the most exciting and electric player in Colorado. The soon-to-be Sand Creek senior also knows she’ll be turning heads and dropping jaws at the college level.
What Derrell doesn’t yet know is where.
“I’m just trying to build relationships right now,” Derrell said. “Teams have a lot of film on me and some colleges coaches have already seen me play last summer. I just want to go some place where they have a good program and the majors I’m interested in like cyber security, computer science or engineering.”
Derrell said she has been in contact with several colleges and has talked with a few coaches over the phone and via video conferencing. Schools that are currently interested include St. Xavier University, Doane University and Concordia University Chicago, the latter of which officially offered the Sand Creek senior on Tuesday afternoon. Keithan Lyons, Derrell’s club coach with the Colorado Hawks said Kansas Wesleyan University has reached out to him, as have a number of Division-I junior colleges.
With a 3.8 GPA in the classroom and currently sitting at No. 16 in the Prep Girls Hoops Colorado player rankings for the Class of 2021, Derrell is a dynamic guard who can impact a game in many different ways. She has great speed and quickness. When she has the ball in her hands, Derrell is a threat to penetrate and can pull up and shoot from anywhere on the floor. Coaches like the way she can create her own shot off the bounce and Derrell has great court vision with the ability to deliver on-time rhythm passes in traffic.
Already a 1,000-point career scorer, Derrell averaged 14.5 points, 3.9 assists, 3.3 rebounds and 2.6 steals per game while playing in an exceedingly balanced offense at Sand Creek. She shot 35 percent (59 for 168) from 3-point range and led the Scorpions into the Class 4A state tournament as the No. 1 overall seed before the team was upset in the Sweet 16.
“We expect to do big things next season,” Derrell said. “We just need to keep our killer mindset how we had it at the beginning of last season.”
Payden Goldberg, who coached Derrell at Sand Creek throughout her high school career, has no doubt whatsoever that she can be an impact player for a college program.
“Nikki just brings an intensity and a competitiveness that sets the bar for any team she’s on,” Goldberg said. “She’s a smaller guard but she really gets after it. Offensively, she can really take over a game. When she gets hot, she’s really hard to stop. She’s also done a really good job of diversifying her game over the years. When she first started with us, she was primarily a 3-point shooter but now she’s gotten stronger in every area, she has a nice floater and really knows how to set the tempo in a lot of different ways.”
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