Chesterton 2019 grad Nick Mullen’s astonishing basketball rise lands him Division I scholarship (and NIL checks) at Central Michigan University

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

How many boys basketball teams do you suppose that made it all the way to the Indiana 4A championship game with an undefeated record had more future Division I basketball players on the coaching staff (one) than on the player roster (zero)?
Surely, the answer is one: the 2021-22 Chesterton Trojans.
Nick Mullen, a 2020 Chesterton graduate and a volunteer assistant coach in 2021-22, became Trojans head basketball coach Marc Urban’s first NCAA Division I basketball player when he accepted a scholarship offer to spend his senior year in college playing and studying at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant. He turns 25 in August.
Understatement of the century: Mullen’s path back into a maroon and gold uniform and an athletic department with a “C” for a logo has been an unconventional one.
“It’s a perfect example of everybody’s running their own race, and everyone’s different,” said Urban, who has a 175-56 record in nine seasons at Chesterton. “His quote to me was, ‘Not bad for a guy who averaged three points as a senior.’”
Mullen already was 6-foot-10 then and was thinner than a late-stage combover. He weighed 155 pounds. He weighs 215 now and was heavier than that before whipping himself into basketball shape during his three seasons playing for Indiana University South Bend, an NAIA school.
Mullen credits two Urban phone calls for redirecting his life path, which ultimately led him to becoming a Division I basketball player who will have everything paid for, plus receive cost-of-living money, education grant dollars and, according to Mullen, $10,000 in NIL payments.
At the time of the first Urban phone call, the word “gamer” had distinctly different meanings to brothers Nick and Chris Mullen, the latter one of the stars of the 2022 state runner-up Chesterton team.
Chris embodied the older usage of the word to an extent few others do. Be it in football as a quarterback, basketball as a forward with a non-stop motor, physical edge and soft shooting touch, or in baseball as a shortstop with power, Chris was a coach’s dream, super competitive, tough, clutch. He was the gamer’s gamer.
Nick was a gamer in the 21st century sense of the word, as in a computer gamer who thought his basketball days were long gone, replaced by Fortnite, or whatever it is the kids play in their basements these days.
Nick was working part-time, as many hours as he could get, at the Boys and Girls Club in Chesterton, and was a part-time student at Ivy Tech.
Luckily for Mullen, high school and college coaches who are right for the profession don’t stop mentoring their athletes when their eligibility expires. They continue the life-coaching aspect of the job.
Urban’s first pivotal phone call was to Mullen, asking him if he would like to become a volunteer assistant coach, starting with his brother’s senior basketball season. Mullen accepted the offer with gratitude.
“Then he kind of fell back in love with basketball,” Urban said.
Not kind of, according to Mullen.
“I never thought I’d do anything remotely with the sport again,” Mullen said. “Coach Urban gave me that call and I completely bought in with that group of guys and that’s probably still the best experience of my life.”
He had put on 70 pounds since high school, which aided him in helping Chesterton’s big men to prepare for confronting big post players.
“I would practice with them, and I started enjoying it more and more, and obviously the feeling of winning all those games making that run, it was an unmatched feeling,” Mullen said.
A big man blessed with soft 3-point shooting range, Nick kept improving by playing daily, and so did the players trying to stop him from scoring, keep him off the boards and prevent him from blocking so many of their shots.
Asked to identify the moment someone first said out loud that maybe he could become a college basketball player, three years delayed, Mullen thought about it for a few seconds, repeated the question to give him more time to think, and then settled on an answer.
“To say it out loud? I think it was probably my brother and me talking about it in the car on the way back from practice, just talking about it as an option, but I don’t think that was a real thought until Coach Urban said something to me at the end-of-the-year meetings,” Mullen said. “When he said that, it seemed interesting, and it kept going from there.”
For the next life-changing phone call, Urban was on the receiving end, and Mullen’s name did not come up until Urban changed the subject.
IU South Bend coach Scott Cooper called to inform Urban that he was withdrawing a scholarship offer that he had made to Travis Grayson, an Indiana All-Star who led the 29-1 team in scoring, and led the Trojans with Chris Mullen in multiple intangible ways as well. Urban asked Cooper if he would have a need for an older 6-10 player who can block shots and bury 3-pointers. Cooper was intrigued enough to invite Urban to bring Nick down for a visit, where the Titans coach watched him scrimmage with his players.
Cooper saw enough potential in Mullen to offer him a scholarship. He accepted.
Based on the statistics Mullen compiled as a freshman, from the outside, the dream looked like just that, a dream, and not a reality-based one. But Mullen and his new coach knew otherwise. Knocking off rust, getting stronger, and learning how to play against better competition in practice, the prospect was improving. He appeared in just nine games as a freshman and played 32 minutes, time enough to block three shots. He averaged 1.1 points and 0.3 rebounds.
He blossomed as a sophomore starter, tied the single game record for blocked shots, then broke it with seven, averaged 5.4 points and 5.3 rebounds and shot .428 from 3-point range.
He blew those numbers to smithereens this past season, averaging 13.9 points, 8.3 rebounds and 2.3 blocks and shooting .434 from 3. He was named Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference Defensive Player of the Year and earned first-team All-CCAC honors.
College recruiting has changed in recent years with the onset of the NCAA transfer portal. It’s tougher for high school players to earn scholarships, as coaches reloading rosters after being raided by bigger programs seek to find older athletes ready to contribute right away.
Division I coaches have somebody on staff researching all-conference teams and statistical leader lists from NCAA Division I, II and III and NAIA schools.
Mullen’s name can be found ranked fourth nationally on the NAIA blocked shots list, and on the CCAC stat leaders, first in field goal percentage (.641), third in rebounding, sixth in 3-point percentage.
In a game vs. St. Xavier of Illinois, Mullen exploded for 29 points, eight rebounds and three blocks, making 3 of 5 3-pointers and 8 of 8 free throws.
Mullen said he “loved” playing for Cooper at IU South Bend.
“I didn’t put my name out there at all, or put any highlights out there, didn’t text or call anybody,” Mullen said. “They found me just through looking around for NAIA guys because I think the NAIA is pretty underrated when it comes to skill guys. They did some homework on me, reached out to Coach Urban, and it went from there.”
So did other Division I programs. Mullen said Ball State, College of Charleston and Western Michigan expressed interest. He said that he was sold on the Chippewas after spending time on his campus visit with first-year head coach Andy Bronkema and assistants Brooks Miller and Jim Lake.
Bronkema comes to CMU from NCAA Division II school Ferris State, where in 12 seasons he won a national championship and nine conference titles and made the NCAA Tournament nine times. Miller won an NCAA Division III national championship and two national Coach of the Year honors at Trine University, where he spent the past 14 seasons as head coach. Lake was a head coach at the NCAA Division III level and an assistant at Division II.
“I liked all the coaches on the visit. I liked them a ton,” Mullen said. “That was the most important factor in deciding to go there. I loved it there. It was great.”
Mullen said of Bronkema: “He’s a great coach, great guy, knows to bring in the right people. That was another thing I saw as far as similarities (between Central Michigan and IU South Bend). He brings in great people.”
Mullen said he is excited about joining “a winning culture and being able to start something new. Being around them on my visit, it was great getting to know them and realizing that they were great guys and are people I’d want to win with. The biggest thing for me was the people.”
Nothing about Mullen, the senior in high school who averaged three points and two rebounds, suggested he was on his way to Division I basketball.
“I was the guy they started and then, ‘Oh, he’s not that good,’ and they would take me out and I would get a few minutes here and there,” Mullen said.
And now this? How did this happen? How did he improve this much?
“A lot was just working hard, going to the gym, lifting, finding the guys to do it with,” Mullen said. “I mean it’s possible to do it alone, but it makes it a lot easier to do it with guys, guys you love and guys who want to do it with you. Finding the right guys and being consistent with it, trying to get in the weight room every day, trying to get on the (shooting) gun, play one-on-one, play open gym when you can.”
His obsessive search for ways to improved his game extended well beyond the time allotted for formal team practices and he never was slowed by injuries.
“I have some friends in South Bend who don’t go to IU South Bend, but they have some great open gym runs that I’m lucky to play in,” he said. “Being able to do everything possible to get better all the time and not really taking any time off was the biggest thing for me.”
Mullen maximized the opportunity his high school coached helped to create for him.
“Nothing really would have been possible without Coach Urban calling me and asking me to coach and then talking to coaches about me,” Mullen said. “He got me to South Bend and he talked to the Central Michigan coaches about me.”
Urban is happy to back a winner, happy to shine a light on what basketball can do to improve lives.
“He’s using the game of basketball to accelerate himself with opportunities he wouldn’t have without basketball. So, I think that piece is really cool,” Urban said. “If he puts himself in a position where he continues to develop, he can have a chance to play overseas.”
Mullen was delighted to expand his world to South Bend and now to Mount Pleasant, Michigan. Tomorrow the world?
“I like being here. I like being around my family and everything, but if that opportunity came up, it would be something I would strongly consider,” said.
To paraphrase Mullen, not bad for a scrawny kid who averaged three and two in high school.