Nick J Lewis Continues to Chase his Dream

Nick J Lewis has been at St Thomas More Prep school this season

Nick J Lewis is a name a lot of ballers recognise, and a guy I have had a lot of people asking about on the site.  When he was last in the UK, the 6’2 guard averaged 31 and 12 assists per game in U18 National League and had a number of pretty big games that made the basketball community take notice, including dropping 51 and 14 assists in a British Colleges semi final game and a 76 point game in secondary school (yeah I know it’s secondary school, but still, 76?!).

Nick first went out to the US in the summer of 2008 to attending the Reebok-Invitational Basketball Camp in New Jersey. He turned a lot of heads with his play, resulting in him attending South Plainfield High School (NJ). In his only season there (08/09) he was named High School player of the week twice, made the All-State Junior Team and was ranked by Scout.com and NjHoops.com as one of the top 250 players in the country (232) whilst averaging a nice 17 points and 9 assists per game.

On completing the season, in the summer of ’09 he played for the New Jersey Demons on the AUU circuit, Luol Deng’s former team, before committing to St Thomas More Prep in Connecticut on a scholarship, to play under Jerry Quinn, the 2nd best ranked High School coach in the nation, where he has just finished.

At St Thomas More, his team finished 3rd in the Reebok National Prep Championships, losing to Brewster Academy in the semi finals. Nick received a lot of High Division 1 interest during the live recruiting period from August till October, but unfortunately got injured before the 09-10 season began, sustaining a minor menisci tear in the knee. As a result of the injury he didn’t play until this January, perhaps scaring off a few of the interested teams.

Talking about his year at St Thomas More in a recent interview with This Is Derbyshire, he said

“Being in America was great, St Thomas More is an all boys Catholic School, of similar prestige to that of Repton School in Derbyshire. Everything is really back to basics there and you have to pass an entry exam to get in. I had to dig in but I really excelled academically and got lots of As and Bs.”

Lewis is currently looking at 2 options; he will either do a Post Graduate Year, or he can go to a Junior College for 1 year. He still needs a few credits to be accepted by the NCAA Clearing House.

It’s looking like the favoured option is going to a JUCO in California for 1 year before hopefully transferring to a D1 programme.

This summer he is back in England for a few months playing for the Wales men’s senior team competing in Division C of the FIBA European Championships, a competition he hopes will put him in favour with Team GB selectors;

“To represent my country at the Olympics would be a great honour. Hopefully, the European Championships will be my chance to shine and get a place at the 2012 games.”

Nick was invited to the GB U20’s trials last year but due to being in the States couldn’t make it. It seems like his dream doesn’t stop with 2012 either, continuing on;

“My aim is still to play in the NBA one day.”

*Huge thanks to Steve King, one of his coaches in the UK who got in touch recently and via a rather back and forth email correspondence kindly got me up to date with Nick’s situation making this writeup possible.