Tyler Nickel and Jalen Washington knew of each other as high school seniors. They even texted each other a bit. But Washington felt unapproachable to Nickel because he was a higher-ranked recruit.
Washington and Nickel both started their careers at North Carolina, where they were 4-star recruits and part of Hubert Davis’ 2022 recruiting class and freshman roommates. They took different winding paths to Vanderbilt basketball, but the prior connection helped both land with Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington’s Commodores via the transfer portal.
