Darris Nichols and his brother have one mission at La Salle: Make Explorers men’s hoops a winner

Growing up in Radford, Va., basketball games between Darris and Shane Nichols almost always ended in a fight.

Shane is two years older than Darris and was stronger and faster when they were kids. The brothers were ultracompetitive, but the tone shifted when they began to play organized basketball. The fights stopped, and they focused on pushing each other on the court.

Darris and Shane went on to play college basketball at West Virginia and Wofford, respectively, before shifting to the sidelines. They made multiple stops at different schools as assistant coaches but never overlapped in their first decade as coaches.

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That was until Darris was named Radford’s head coach in 2021 and he brought Shane with him. The pair led the Highlanders to multiple 20-win seasons, before Darris earned a new opportunity at La Salle and was named its head coach in March. Shane followed again as the associate head coach. The brothers, now in the City of Brotherly Love, are ready to lead the Explorers back to success behind a culture built on toughness.

“We value toughness before anything,” Darris said. “I think that when you have a common [theme] in college basketball where guys just leave after every year or two years, it’s hard to build toughness. So you got to recruit to it.
And I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that in Year 1. So that’s kind of in our philosophy of getting in the right direction.”

The brothers had similar coaching paths. Darris and Shane went overseas to play professionally following their college careers, but that time was short-lived.

Darris injured both knees and Shane also got banged up. Their post-playing days were unceremonious at first, with Darris working as a valet and Shane at a sales job.

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Shane missed basketball and spent time coaching at Radford High School, his alma mater, before returning to Radford University in 2010 as an assistant coach. Darris turned to his West Virginia coach Bob Huggins and joined his staff as a graduate assistant in 2010.

The brothers spent the next 10 years building their profiles as assistant coaches at multiple schools. They made sure to consistently stay in touch during the season and would bounce ideas off each other and learn more about players the other may have faced.

“We talked every day,” Darris said. “Most of the time it was about, ‘Have you seen this player? What do you know about this? Can you send me this guy’s contact info?’
It was a lot of that going on.”

Darris also jokingly tried his luck with poaching future NBA All-Star Ja Morant from Shane when his older brother was at Murray State, and he was at Florida.

“When he was at Murray State, they had Ja Morant, and I called him and I said, ‘Hey, man, I’m trying to get Ja Morant to transfer.’ He said he wasn’t going to do a transfer.”

Darris earned the head coaching job at Radford after six seasons as an assistant at Florida. Shane was coaching at Murray State at the time, and the Racers had won three straight regular-season conference championships with him on staff. Still, the decision to join forces with his brother back home was a no-brainer.

“I wanted to come help my brother be successful, and I felt like there was nobody else in the profession that could help him do that more than me,” Shane said. “That’s just because I got his back. He can trust me, and I’m going to work hard to make sure he is successful.”

The brothers spent the next four seasons building the Radford program together.

Radford won 21 games in 2022-23 and 20 games in 2024-25. Darris and Shane won 68 games in their four years with the Highlanders, but a new opportunity presented itself this past offseason.

La Salle’s head coaching job was open following the retirement of Fran Dunphy, and Darris got the offer to fill the role. The move offered a change and new challenge in his eyes, so he made the move up to 20th and Olney. Shane followed suit.

“It was cool opportunity because most of the college jobs that I’ve been at have been in college towns or small towns,” Darris said. “So I wanted something different. Let’s coach in the college city.”

The brothers are taking over an Explorers program that has not won more than 20 games or the Big 5 title since the 2012-13 season. Darris and Shane crafted a natural family feel at Radford and are looking to do the same at La Salle.

“Throughout the years with the teams we’ve had is just being able to mold and really build them, and they take on our mentality to the game,” Shane said. “You see it toward the middle and end of the year where they buy into the toughness piece. They buy into the togetherness piece. Right now, our guys are doing that. We just got to keep molding that, building that, and making it stronger.”

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