The first impression underwhelmed.
Rick Nault had heard all the talk about the legendary Tyler Nelson, his sparkling career at Haverhill Travel Basketball, the countless points, wins and titles. Through four years in travel ball, Nelson’s team lost once – in the eighth-grade title game to Lowell, which featured future NBA player Terance Mann.
But Nault wavered.
“I heard that he was a kid that dominated grammar school basketball and he could really shoot the basketball. He was like 5-foot-4 and 85 pounds the first time I saw him the summer before his freshman year,” said Nault, the legendary former boys basketball coach at Central Catholic. “I absolutely wondered how he was going to play varsity basketball in the MVC.”
Nelson spent the next four years carving out a Hall of Fame hoop career at Central that helped carry him through Division 1 college ball at Fairfield and then to pro ball in Europe.
Now 30, he recently announced his retirement from the game, moving to his alma mater at Fairfield, where he will be the general manager of the hoop program.
Coach and player were together every step of the way at Central as Nelson scored 1,443 points with 230 3-pointers, stacking an 86-17 career record.
Nault, now a police officer and the founder of the New England Hoops Academy, said there were no secrets to Nelson’s legendary career, that included a pair of Eagle-Tribune MVPs and three trips to our Super Team.
Nelson was the first Central incoming ninth grader to ever work the famed Raider Basketball School and not attend as a camper. He wasted no time, dispelling Nault’s immediate fears the following December.
“He came off the bench as a freshman and in our first scrimmage at BC High, he scored 35 points,” said Nault, whose program was riding high after state titles in 2008 and 2010.
“We knew we had something special. He was a small kid, but his basketball IQ was off the charts. And I had never seen a high school kid shoot like that before.
“Watching him practice and shoot the ball, I said to myself, there was going to be a big game he wins on his own as a freshman.”
That was on a team that featured All-Scholastic senior Jimmy Zenevitch, and it happened in the playoffs.
In the D-1 North quarters at No. 4 Charlestown, Nelson hit three straight third-quarter three-pointers to turn the game around and give Central the lead for good.
The 4-for-4, 14-point night earned the 15-year-old rock-star status in Raider country. We all knew that March day.
He told me – on the record – in the postgame that day: “I got the ball, I was open and I shot it, no panic, and it went in. I really don’t get nervous. I was open. I hit my shots, that was it.”
Greatness was immediately evident. And “Baby Face” Nelson’s legend had been forged.
“What can you say, he was just special. ,” said Nault. “But what made him different was how he worked at it.
“When Jimmy graduated, he immediately became the go-to guy, our leading scorer as a sophomore. He just took it and ran with it. He knew he had put in the work, and he was ready to take over the program.”
It was a glorious time in area high school hoop.
Gyms overflowed on Friday nights in the Valley. The impact proved to be a statewide thing, but the intensity in the conference was simply vicious.
And Nelson ate it up.
“He thrived on being ‘that guy.’ Every gym he played in, he was the villain,” said Nault. “And he embraced that role. He used it to drive him to the highest level possible.”