Kansas guard S’Mya Nichols was looking to begin the next stage of her college career when she kicked off her search for a place to live off campus during the 2025-26 season.
But a feeling kept nagging at her “deeper down.” Interaction with upperclassmen — yes, including her, now that she’s a junior — could be a key part of the first-year experience for her younger teammates. Why would she deprive KU’s four-woman freshman class of that opportunity?
“It’s like, ‘OK, why wouldn’t I live next to them’ — I live literally next to them, all of them — ‘and hang out with them, show them different experiences of where we stay, and just giving them a time that’s outside of basketball?'” Nichols recalled. “Because as a freshman, you just go into everything with uncertainty.”
Two years removed from her own memorable freshman season at KU, and with a full season as the Jayhawks’ consensus team leader under her belt, Nichols is doing her part to take her younger teammates under her wing.
“We just got back from our retreat, and I think this particular team appears to be closer than any group we’ve ever had at this juncture,” head coach Brandon Schneider told the Journal-World, “… and I think that’s really a credit to S’Mya and other leaders on our team for being really intentional about team chemistry and camaraderie both on and off the court.”
To this point, halfway through her KU career, Nichols has delivered on her immense on-court promise as ESPN’s No. 34 player in the 2023 class. The 6-foot guard from Overland Park battled through a tough sophomore season to earn a first-team All-Big 12 selection, as she averaged 18.6 points per game and set a school record with 218 made free throws.
“I learned that I was capable, that I’m capable and that I can be a person to depend on when it comes to times where it’s really needed,” Nichols said. “I learned patience for sure, and different ways to keep my teammates going even though the season was hard.”
Nichols said that the Jayhawks’ culture has progressed greatly since her arrival two years ago and that KU’s locker-room chemistry fully withstood an injury-laden 2024-25 campaign that ended without a postseason trip.
“We were still very close-knit and we never divided,” Nichols said. “You would have never known. We were really close and we just didn’t do the best that we thought we should have.”
The hope that KU can do much better this time around originates from the return of essentially every major contributor from last season — a group headlined by Nichols and wing Elle Evans — combined with the arrival of an unprecedented freshman class of forwards Tatyonna Brown and Jaliya Davis and guards Libby Fandel and Keeley Parks.
“It doesn’t take much (to incorporate them) when they’re buying into it,” Nichols said. “It doesn’t take too much when they are really into the program, they have a lot of pride for the program, and they’re super excited to be here. That’s the best thing, especially when you can see it.”
Davis, a fellow Overland Park native, is the highest-ranked recruit in KU’s recent history and just the second McDonald’s All-American the Jayhawks have ever signed out of high school. Fandel and Parks rank about as highly as Nichols did in her day, if not higher, and Brown is what Nichols called an “insanely athletic, great shot blocker.”
“I don’t know that pressure’s the right word, but I think when highly recruited players come into a program and there’s immediate expectations, nobody has dealt with that or handled that probably as well as S’Mya has in our program,” Schneider said. “I think (she will be) able to be a resource for especially some of our freshmen who are coming in with pretty high expectations.”
Nichols shared her sense of the broad outlook for the 2025-26 season for her younger teammates.
“I think the next year’s going to be filled with many mistakes but many opportunities to grow as well,” she said. “I feel like if they’re right mentally, then they should be fine no matter what, no matter the expectations that they have, and that they will meet their expectations.”
Nichols has for more than a full season at this point guided the Jayhawks as their lead guard. And she has plenty of areas she’s focusing on this offseason, like shooting the 3 off the dribble or in catch-and-shoot situations (she made 38% of her 3s on just 71 attempts last season), and defending shiftier guards.
To this point in fall practice, however, they haven’t called a single play for her. It’s been all about bringing the freshmen up to speed. And during a recent week of practice, Nichols recorded 28 assists to six turnovers.
“It’s allowed her to really defer,” Schneider said, “and when we all know that she has the mentality to be very aggressive and go score, but right now I think she’s just really focused on ‘How can I make other people better?’, and I think that’s really benefited her in developing and demonstrating that she trusts not only her returning teammates, but especially some of our new additions.”
The trust has grown off the court, too. On that team retreat, Schneider said the players had numerous opportunities “where they could have scattered and gone to their rooms or got a nap or whatever, but they were just constantly together. They had a few hours on the lake together, and as soon as that was over, all of a sudden they’re all over playing sand volleyball.”
Nichols said Schneider’s assessment of the team’s rapport — and the role the retreat played in it — is “completely true.” The Jayhawks hung out and had fun, but they also learned a lot about each other.
“We did the ‘four H’s’ — which is hometown, and then hardship, and then hero, and then hope — we did the four H’s in front of everybody,” Nichols said. “I think every single person went up there and was just crying, and really just buying into that.”
As has been well documented, Nichols stayed home for college in large part because she wanted to mold her in-state program into a powerhouse. As she told the Journal-World at the time of her signing in 2022, “You don’t have to go to a top-five program. Why don’t you make a top-five program?”
But the proximity to home has been particularly important for Nichols recently, largely due to factors beyond her control. A year ago, Nichols’ grandmother died; then, in June, she lost her stepfather Dane Griffin, a former KU football player who grew up in Lawrence.
She described being close to her family, amid these circumstances, as “probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Being that call away and being able to show up immediately is something that I didn’t know was going to be so important,” Nichols said. “It’s something that you don’t ever think about because you don’t want that to happen to your family members, but it happened.”
As she enters her junior year, Nichols said it’s hard to believe she’s already been at KU for two years, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel strange to her at all to consider herself an upperclassman.
“I still feel the same,” she said.
Kansas guard S’Mya Nichols holds the ball while guarded by teammate Sania Copeland during summer workouts in July.
Kansas guard S’Mya Nichols, left, makes a move while defended by teammate Laia Conesa during summer workouts in June.
Damon Young/Kansas Athletics
Damon Young/Kansas Athletics