Franklin & Marshall College

Nick Nichay will enter his seventh season as head coach of the Diplomats during the 2025-26 season. Nichay was elevated to head coach in the spring of 2020. He served as the Interim Head Coach at the start of the 2019-20 season after spending the previous seven seasons as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator with the Franklin & Marshall men’s basketball team. The Diplomats enter the 2025-26 season coming after winning the program's first Centennial Conference Championship under Nichay.

The 2024-25 season saw Nichay and his staff named Coaching Staff of the Year for the second consecutive season following a 21-7, 11-2 CC campaign that produced a Centennial Conference Championship and the most wins in a season under his leadership. In 2023-24, he led the Diplomats to their first win in the Centennial Conference Tournament since 2016.

As an assistant, Nichay oversaw several aspects of the program relating to recruiting, player development, scouting, academic advisement, and general day to day operations of the program. Nichay has served as the recruiting coordinator since his arrival in September of 2012. He has served in the head coach capacity on two separate occasions during the previous two years, leading the team to a 10-4 mark during that span with two wins over top-10 teams.

During his time as an assistant at F&M, Nichay helped guide the team to a 156-61 record. In that time the team qualified for the Centennial Conference (CC) playoffs in all eight seasons, winning the regular conference championship on two occasions and finishing with a share of second place three times. The 2017-18 team earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament, advancing to the Sweet 16 and finishing the year ranked 20th in the nation. The team also achieved at a high level in the classroom and was recognized by the NABC with the Team Academic Excellence Award for achieving a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher. In the 2015-16 season, the program won both the regular season and conference tournament championships on the way to an automatic NCAA Tournament bid.

Across his tenure, Nichay has coached 27 All-Conference selections, including nine first-team all-conference players, three CC Player of the Year recipients, three NABC All-Americans, and three Academic All-Americans. Twice he has helped to recruit and coach the Centennial Conference Rookie of the Year. The 2015 recipient of that award, Brandon Federici, went on to break the CC career scoring record in the 2017-18 season with 2,072 points during his four years at F&M. Federici was also named Centennial Conference Player of the Year, NABC All-American, CoSIDA Academic All-American, Jostens Trophy Finalist, and was a DIII Reese’s All-Star game participant.

Prior to arriving at Franklin & Marshall, Nichay spent two years as an assistant coach at the Division II level with Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. Nichay helped in the recruitment and development of players that would play a number of key roles in Le Moyne’s NCAA Tournament bid in 2014, its first since 1997.

Before arriving at Le Moyne, Nichay spent one season as a Division III assistant at Hartwick College. While at Hartwick, Nichay helped first-year head coach Todd McGuinness lay the foundation for future success with the program. He helped in recruiting Hartwick’s all-time leading scorer and leading rebounder in Jared Suderly, who went on to become a two-time D3 Hoops and NABC All-America selection that would help lead Hartwick to three NCAA Tournament appearances.

In addition to his roles as an assistant coach, Nichay has worked several camps in recent years. Camps, where he has worked as a counselor, include the Hoop Group, Princeton, Penn, and Columbia elite camps. He is also the Director of the Elite Camp at Franklin & Marshall.

Nichay graduated in 2009 from Rutgers University with a bachelor’s degree in sport management. While at Rutgers, he served as a student manager with the men’s basketball team where he assisted the program in a variety of day-to-day operations. Nichay was also named head manager for his senior year with the program.