Sun Belt Basketball: Ranking of 25 best players from last decade (2013-23)

8. Nijal Pearson

A 6’5 wing from Beaumont, Texas, Pearson spent his entire collegiate career under Danny Kaspar at Texas State. He actually started all 133 games he played for the Bobcats, starting in 2016 and ending with the start of the pandemic four years later. Texas State had a few nice seasons during that run and got some great performances from Pearson along the way.

The Bobcats won 22 games in his freshman season, a campaign where he was already averaging 13.3 points and 5.7 rebounds a game. Pearson put up decent production throughout his career and helped lead Texas State back to relevance as an upperclassman. The Bobcats would finish 2nd in the Sun Belt in both seasons while Pearson averaged 16.4 and 19.4 points per game respectively in those final two years. He scored a career-high 33 points at Portland as a junior, though he couldn’t quite get Texas State into the Big Dance, settling for a pair of CIT trips.

While the pandemic put a damper on the end of his collegiate career, Pearson was named Sun Belt Player of the Year in 2020, earning First Team All-Sun Belt honors for a second straight season. He was the conference’s top scorer and had decent steals numbers throughout those four seasons. Pearson was a major threat on both sides of the ball during his entire career at Texas State and his contributions are sorely missed, though certainly not forgotten.