Coppin State baseball made history last spring, winning the MEAC tournament to snap a nearly 30-year NCAA Tournament drought.
The Eagles went on to lose in the Greenville regional, dropping games to East Carolina and Coastal Carolina. But the 2022 season was one of growth and a massive stepping stone in the right direction for the future of the program.
At the center of that, in many respects, was infielder Brian Nicolas, a transfer from Bryant who hit .286/.398/.476 with 16 extra-base hits last season.
Now, Coppin enters the 2023 season as one of four MEAC baseball programs to have merged with the Northeast Conference (NEC). Nicolas is back in the conference where he began his college career.
“It’s definitely going to be cool to go back and end my career where I started it in the conference where I started,” said Nicolas, a fifth-year player.
While Coppin has moved to the NEC, Bryant moved out of the NEC to the America East Conference beginning this school year. As such, Nicolas won’t have any crossover with his former program.
However, what he does have is extensive knowledge that he has passed on to his coaches and teammates, especially about playing NCAA Tournament-caliber teams like Long Island University and Central Connecticut State.
The Eagles begin NEC play against Wagner at Joe Cannon Stadium in Hanover, Md., on March 10.
“The new conference, new lay of the land brings with it more enthusiasm than we typically have going into the season because the schedule is so different,” Coppin head coach Sherman Reed said. “… We needed to make sure that mentally we were prepared and make sure things like the cold don’t get in our heads.”
Reed was appreciative of Nicolas’ advice heading into the season.
“That was very important, and he made it clear that there were more weather elements to deal with,” the coach said. “He was quick to point out who, most likely, would be our biggest competitor.”
When Nicolas made the decision to enter the transfer portal and come to Coppin, Reed’s vision of where the team could go was reason enough for Nicolas to make the jump to Baltimore. The Eagles went 10-29 in 2021, but Nicolas was confident in the potential of the program.
“Coming into Coppin, I was looking at their stats from 2021 and that really didn’t scare me much,” Nicolas said. “After my meeting with Coach Reed and the previous recruiting coach they had, I could feel that they had something special going on with the players they had. They just needed a couple pieces.”
Given the defensive acumen he showed at Bryant, Nicolas worked to step in quickly as a leader from his position at third base. In just one season, the Eagles committed 19 fewer errors as a team and improved their team fielding percentage from .931 to .962.
Though he committed a team-high 15 errors, Nicolas finished second on the team in assists with 93.
“They really emphasized that they needed a defensive player that could make the routine plays and even plus plays when they can,” Nicolas said.
For as solid as he was in the field with the Bulldogs, Nicolas had room to grow as a hitter. During his final season with Bryant in 2021, he hit .264/.302/.314 with seven extra-base hits. Once he got to Coppin, his plan at the plate didn’t necessarily match what the Eagles’ philosophy was. Nicolas’ aggressive approach — trying to attack the first pitch or make something happen early in the count — wasn’t what the Eagles have preached.
Nicolas was hitting .328 after play on March 19 last season, but he slumped to .254 by the end of play on May 2. However, after working with Coppin’s coaching staff to develop more discipline and work the count more, he had more success offensively.
In his last seven games, Nicolas hit .461 (12-of-26) with two home runs, 12 RBIs, two doubles and eight runs scored, raising his season average 32 points to .286.
“To have a kid be one way, probably his whole life, and come into Coppin and realize what we were telling him would make him a better baseball player was huge,” Reed said. “The light bulb probably went off at the three-quarter mark of the season and his production took off.”
That late-season surge helped secure him first-team All-MEAC honors at third base. He was also named Most Outstanding Performer at the MEAC tournament in late May.
The excitement of making the NCAA Tournament, however, trumped all of that and has lit a fire under him and his teammates heading into the NEC.
Two-way standout Jordan Hamberg was named the NEC Preseason Player of the Year by Perfect Game, and the Eagles received votes in Collegiate Baseball’s 2023 preseason poll.
There is a target on this team’s back that hasn’t been there before, but higher expectations have just created more hunger for Coppin’s players.
“Our goal is definitely to try to win it all again this year,” Nicolas said. “We don’t really focus on the target that we have on our back even though we know there’s one there. We just take it day by day. We’re going to continue to take each game one game at a time and take it slowly. We know that if we do what we have to do on the field, we’ll be successful.”
Photo Credit: Tim Rice/TagTheShooter/Coppin State Athletics
Issue 279: February/March 2023
Originally published Feb. 15, 2023