Women's Basketball
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
- Email:
- nicole.collier@siu.edu
- Phone:
- 618-453-5449
Nicole Collier enters her fifth season as an assistant coach for Saluki women’s basketball.
Last season, the Salukis posted their sixth-straight winning record. Southern defeated a ranked opponent (Missouri State) for the first time since 1991 and the Salukis finished with a RPI of 105, its highest since 2007. SIU’s four top-100 wins during the 2019-20 season were its most since at least 2002. The Salukis also repeated as Compass Challenge Champions and Nicole Martin and Makenzie Silvey were both selected to the All-MVC honorable mention team while Brittney Patrick earned her first career All-Defensive Team honor.
During the 2018-19 season, the Salukis posted a winning record, which included SIU’s first mid-season tournament title since the 1986-87 season. The Salukis earned the No. 11 ranking in the WBCA’s Academic Top-25 Honor Roll, which was the highest finish in program history and Nicole Martin and Makenzie Silvey were selected to All-MVC teams.
The 2017-18 season marked the fourth-straight winning season for the Salukis and SIU once again earned the No. 4 seed in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament and advanced to the semifinal game for the second time in three years.
The Salukis continued to excel in the classroom in 2017-18. SIU posted a 3.34 grade point average and tied a program record with four recipients of the MVC Commissioner’s Academic Excellence award, given to student-athletes who post at least a 3.5 GPA for consecutive terms.
In Collier’s first season on staff, she helped SIU to a 16-15 record and the Salukis reached the postseason for the second-straight season. Southern also got it done in the classroom, as the Salukis earned inclusion in the WBCA’s Top-25 Academic Honor Roll at No. 22 with a 3.51 Team GPA.
Collier arrived in Carbondale with 12 years of collegiate coaching experience after spending the previous seven years at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Mo., including four as Lincoln’s head coach.
During her tenure as head coach, Collier led the Blue Tigers to a pair of Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association (MIAA) tournament appearances and twice led her teams to double-digit win totals. She had seven student-athletes earn All-MIAA honors in her four seasons as head coach, while 19 student-athletes, including eight following the 2015-16 season, earned spots on the MIAA Academic Honor Roll.
In 2014-15, Collier engineered a seven-win improvement from the year prior, as the Blue Tigers went 12-14, with four of those losses coming in the final minute. The season culminated in Lincoln advancing to the MIAA tournament for the third time in four seasons.
In the summer of 2014-15, Collier was chosen as an assistant coach for the USA Sports Events Division II Select Team, which played a series of games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Prior to being promoted to Lincoln’s head coach, Collier spent three seasons as an assistant coach for the Blue Tigers. During her three seasons on the bench, the Blue Tigers posted 12 or more wins in a season twice, including the second-most (15) wins in a single-season in program history in 2012-13.
Before her arrival at Lincoln, Collier served as an assistant coach at Central Missouri from 2004-2009. At UCM, she helped lead the Jennies to two NCAA Regional appearances, five-straight seasons of 14 or more victories and made the MIAA tournament each season.
Collier played two seasons collegiately at Missouri Western State, where she led MWSU to a MIAA title in 2002, earned both all-region and all-conference accolades and was later inducted into MWSU’s Hall of Fame. She transferred to MWSU from Jefferson College, where she was a two-time All-American and was the first athlete inducted into Jefferson College’s Hall of Fame in 2009.
Collier has an undergraduate degree in physical education and a master’s in exercise science and sport administration. She and her husband, Terry, currently reside in Carbondale with their daughter, Reese.
