One of the people principally responsible for shaping the basketball career of new Kansas forward Keanu Dawes was a Jayhawk himself.
“It was neat when Keanu told me that he was going there,” said Brett Nixon, Dawes’ high school coach at Stratford High in Houston. “Pretty special.”
Nixon, though born and raised in Texas, loved the KU basketball program, attended the university and ended up witnessing some strong seasons under Roy Williams and Bill Self — he was there from 2002 to 2006 or so, he said.
More than a decade later, toward the tail end of Nixon’s 15 years as a basketball coach himself, he had the chance to coach Dawes — meaning that one of his own proteges is now headed to his alma mater.
“Obviously if you’re playing at Kansas, you’re a very special player,” Nixon told the Journal-World. “He’s a very skilled player. I think what stands out the most for Keanu for me, though, is just the type of person he is. The way he treats others, his character.”
When Nixon arrived at Stratford, Dawes was a 6-foot-2 sophomore. He was a late bloomer to the extent that by the end of his time as a high school player, he had grown to 6-foot-9. He had also developed along the way into a top-150 prospect nationally. Dawes was a two-time finalist for the Guy V. Lewis Award for the best boys basketball player in the Houston area. He earned all-state honors from the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches as a senior in 2023, when he was also his district’s offensive player of the year.
Dawes stayed close to home to attend Rice out of high school, before playing two seasons at Utah.
Nixon said that as he has followed Dawes’ career in the years since, and as they’ve caught up over the years when Dawes has been back in town, he’s been impressed by his former player’s maturity.
“Just being able to look back on past events and use it to grow from,” Nixon said. “No event in specific, but just like when you hear him talk, just like any kid you’ve coached as they get older, he just brings a sense of wisdom to them. How he’s probably navigated the portal, how he’s navigated college sports, he really seems like he has a certain wisdom about him.”
He pointed to the fact that Dawes still speaks fondly of and has strong relationships with his past collegiate coaches. He will be an excellent representative of KU, Nixon said.
“I felt like he’s just a really special, unique kid with a great personality that I would say is probably different than maybe most high-major kids,” Nixon said, “in that he’s just a really unique individual … that doesn’t seem to get caught up in the hype of being a big-time basketball player.”
He’s already been in the Big 12 the past two seasons with Utah, where he averaged 12.5 points and 8.8 rebounds last year, and now he’ll make the journey to KU.
Nixon said Dawes let him know that he was visiting KU on the day he made the trip to Lawrence. He also got a call from KU associate head coach Jeremy Case, with whom he overlapped a bit in Houston (Case was an assistant at what was then known as Houston Baptist from 2012 to 2016).
And then came the commitment.
“Lawrence and the University of Kansas are a special place to me,” Nixon said, “but more than anything I’m excited for Keanu.”
Brett Nixon
Contributed photo