By Eddie Young
Managing Editor
Nick Koch became the College’s second all-time leading scorer on Feb. 7. One week later, he became their second all-time leading assister. However, it wasn’t always guaranteed for him that he would be a superstar college athlete the moment he first touched a basketball.
It took Koch until sixth grade to start playing basketball. In years when other kids were playing recreation and travel ball, trying to refine their skills in their earliest developmental stages, the College’s star guard was testing his athleticism wherever he could.
“I was in the stage of trying every sport and seeing which one I liked,” Koch, a senior finance major, said. “I played soccer, wrestling, football and baseball.”
After giving basketball a shot, playing with his local Catholic Youth Organization team in Bergen County, basketball became the sport he loved, playing all throughout middle school and committing to it full time once he got to high school.
The Hawthorne native took his talents to Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, New Jersey, citing the higher level of competition basketball-wise. Playing for one of the schools that is consistently towards the top of the basketball pyramid in Bergen County, Koch knew he’d be competing against the best in practice and in games week in and week out.
“He’s very competitive in everything he does,” Kevin Diverio, Don Bosco’s head coach since 1995 and a three-time state champion, said. “He always channeled tough coaching into making him better, and it was always a competitive edge of his.”
Koch got a taste of the varsity level throughout his sophomore year while playing on junior varsity before getting consistent minutes his junior and senior years. However, the New Jersey Athletic Conference’s leading scorer wasn’t necessarily lighting up the box score in high school like he does nowadays. Playing alongside three eventual Division I athletes and three other Division III athletes meant that the ball was going to have to be shared during his senior year.
“I realized I needed to play my role to help my team win,” Koch said.
While Koch entered this season listed at six-foot-one-inch, 180 pounds, he did not always have this size to him, especially in his high school days.
“I think people saw his size and took him for granted and didn’t give him credit for how good he was,” Diverio said. “It was good for us.”
That Don Bosco team ended up 25-5, making runs to both the Bergen County Jamboree final and the state sectional final. However, it wasn’t necessarily just Koch’s quickness and intensity on the court that caught the eyes of the College’s head basketball coach at the time, Matthew Goldsmith, but the respect he garnered from his teammates.
Koch’s most notable Don Bosco teammate during his senior year was then-sophomore Dylan Harper, who became the second overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft and has been one of the best rookies in the NBA this season.
“When we were leaving a Bosco game,” Goldsmith, now the coach of Middlebury College, said, “I said to my assistant ‘If Dylan Harper, who’s gonna play in the NBA, trusts Nick to have the ball in his hands, we should probably trust that he’s going to be pretty good for us long term.’”
That, along with great performances on the AAU circuit with the NJ Panthers, gave Koch the opportunity to become a Lion.
For the five-time NJAC Player of the Week, going from being more of a role player on his high school team to the focal point of the Lions’ offense was not a change that just happened overnight.
“When nobody was watching, that was when I thrived,” Koch said. “Going into college, my whole mindset flipped. I’m thinking immediately, ‘I’m the best point guard here, I’m gonna go prove it.’”
Even with all the hard work entering his freshman year, Koch still struggled to find consistent playing time, coming off the bench 20 times, averaging 10 minutes a game. However, sitting and learning from some of the more experienced guards on the team ended up working in Koch’s favor.
“When it came to practice, they were always working me,” Koch, the NJAC’s current minutes played leader, said. “I never back down to competition, so I’d always go at them as well. That level of competitiveness and drive and tenacity would bring us individually over the top. Going into my sophomore year, I kept that same tenacity and transitioned it to as many guys on the team as I could.”
In his sophomore year, Koch announced his presence to the NJAC. He started all 28 games he played in for the Lions, averaging a team best of 17.7 points per game on an efficient 48% from the field and 4.5 assists per game, good for second in the conference.
“He went into that freshman to sophomore summer and just killed it, got so much better,” Goldsmith said. “He really worked hard and came back a confident playmaker who was ready to explode onto the scene.”
The team went 20-9 in his first year running the offense, and they made a run as a five seed to become NJAC champions, knocking off the top two seeds in the conference on the road en route to their title.
“Winning the NJAC my sophomore year was by far my greatest accomplishment and by far the greatest feeling I’ve ever felt at TCNJ,” Koch, a 2025 First-Team and 2024 Second-Team All-NJAC player, said. “The feeling of being on the court after a win with people I love is just unforgettable.”
“Part of the reason why we won was we were a little naive to how difficult it was to go win one of those,” Goldsmith said. “We were just playing, and he was the king of that. He was out there just enjoying every moment and playing.”
After already taking a massive step in his development from year one to year two, Koch stepped up his game even more entering his junior year. He put on ten pounds, and scored 21.4 points per game, putting him third in the NJAC, on 49% from the field. The team once again rallied behind his consistent performances, going 20-8 and securing an at-large berth for their second NCAA tournament appearance in a row.
“After his sophomore year, going into his junior year, he came back a different person,” Goldsmith said. “Just so much stronger. He had done so much work in the weight room to try to solidify his body and be more healthy. That was because of what a competitor he was.”
Koch’s work improved his health, as his junior year was his first year he played in every single game, although he only missed one during his sophomore year and missed some games due to coach’s decisions in his freshman year.
However, after Koch’s junior year, Goldsmith left to take the head coaching job at Middlebury, leading Koch to test the waters in the transfer portal. But after getting contacted by other Division III schools, and even some Division II schools, Koch decided it would be best to stay and run it back for one final ride at the College with his teammates that he had been working hard with every day for the past few years.
Taking over the mantle as the head coach was a former assistant under Goldsmith, Evan Elberg, who had also coached Koch’s older brother, Michael, on AAU with the New Jersey Road Runners.
“When I got the job, [Nick] was my first phone call,” Elberg said. “His energy, his selflessness, his ability to sacrifice for the betterment of the program, it jumped out of the phone.”
Elberg entered a program that had had two years of success and had a great culture developed, and he relied on Koch, along with senior Matthew Solomon, the NJAC’s current rebounding leader at 11.3 per game, to keep that culture alive.
“He allows me to coach him really hard and he has great mental toughness where I can get on him pretty good and he always responds with ‘yes coach’,” Elberg said. “It creates a great environment where I’m allowed to hold everyone to that standard. When I get on our fourth, fifth, sixth guy in the rotation, they’re able to take it because Nick gets it too.”
The Lions started off the season fairly well under Elberg, winning a bunch of early games and even making their way into the Top 25 nationally. However, it was an eight game win streak in conference play at the turn of the new year where Koch and the Lions really hit their stride.
Koch averaged 28.5 points per game during that win streak, including a 33-point performance in a double overtime home win over Stockton where he played 49 of the 50 minutes and hit a buzzer-beater three to send the Ospreys home. Also in that stretch was a career high 38-point performance at Rutgers-Newark, where he went a perfect 18-18 from the free throw line.
“Instead of trying to go to the game, I started letting the game come to me,” Koch, who is on the top 25 watchlist for the Trevor Hudgins Award, said.
“The game has slowed down for him,” Elberg said. “Through the second half of the year, he’s done a really good job of taking what the defense gives him. He’s getting games with seven, eight, nine assists.”
This run has seen the College solidify the two seed for the conference tournament, and will almost surely get them a spot in the NCAA tournament once again. After losing out on the award last season, Koch has put himself in an even greater position to be the NJAC Player of the Year this season.
As his final season of college basketball nears a close, Koch doesn’t know what the future holds for him. He could try out playing professionally overseas, or could stay in Bergen County and get a job in the area. But no matter what comes next, Koch will have left one of the biggest legacies any Lion has left on the program.
“All he wants to do is win, it just shows daily,” Elberg said. “He’s a really good basketball player too, but he’s an even better person and he’s got a big heart.”
“Nick is a competitor and a worker and everything he’s been able to achieve on the court is because he’s worked his tail off for it,” Goldsmith said. “If he wanted to improve an area of his game, he put hours into it, and that’s what’s made him the player he is today. The accolades and the love he’s received this season, he has earned every single minute of it through his work.”
