The freshman post player ended the game with 11 points, 10 rebounds and one black eye.
Actually, he had the shiner coming into the game and by Thursday night it wasn’t really black and blue, it was black and maroon and had a patch of gold.
“I woke up this morning and looked and it was like, ‘Geesh, it’s gotten worse,’” Pickett said with a postgame smile that, accompanied with the discoloration beneath his right eye, made him look like one of those day-after heavyweights following a tough 12 rounder.
“It’s funny because we knew everybody was going to be asking about that,” point guard T.J. Burch, who led the Raiders with 23 points, said with a laugh afterward. “We talked about it tonight and thought he should tell everybody he got into a fight.”
Pickett nodded when he heard what Burch had said: “Yeah, they all told me I should say my girlfriend punched me in the face or something.
“But really I just caught an elbow in practice Tuesday.”
He said teammate Dominic Pangonis gave him the inadvertent souvenir.
So, did he see stars?
“It was a pretty decent shot,” he said. “I sure saw something for a couple of seconds.”
His reaction further galvanized the growing respect he’s gotten this season from his teammates and coaches.
“He didn’t go out,” said head coach Clint Sargent. “He played the next rep. And then he played again in yesterday’s practice. He didn’t flinch. He’s one of the tougher competitors I’ve been around.” Pickett shrugged off the pat on the back:
“I’m just trying to be as tough as possible. I don’t want to sit down.”
He knows about sitting.
A marked man
After a stellar high school career at Blackhawk Christian in Fort Wayne, he chose Wright State over several mid-major schools, but found himself coming off the bench in 11 of the Raiders first 12 games.
In five of them, he averaged just over four minutes of playing time and never made a field goal in any of them. In three of those games, he never even took a shot.
Then on December 22 his season took a dramatic turn.
Sargent inserted him into the starting lineup and he’s scored in double figures in eight of the 16 games since. Five times he’s pulled down double digit rebounds.
Last month, for three weeks in a row, he was named the Horizon League Freshman of the Week.
Yet even with Pickett’s sudden notability and success, there are some teams in the league — especially Horizon League defending champ Robert Morris which comes into the Nutter Center Sunday for the Raiders’ regular season home finale — that see a chance to push aside the hype and deliver some hurt.
They realize Pickett is young — he’s still 19 — and that he’s long and lean, which gives opponents a long runway to land some rough stuff.
Pickett knows that, too:
“I think we’ve seen in a couple games where teams tried to get at me physically. I know Robert Morris did earlier this year.”
Sargent agreed, though said Pickett wasn’t the only target in the host Colonials 72-66 victory on Feb 4: “They did bully us collectively, not just Kellen.”
Pickett finished with six points,11 rebounds and two blocked shots that game.
Early on Thursday night, IU Indy tried some of the same physical play using 6-foot-7, 215 pound Finley Woodward, a senior playing in his 133rd college game.
And at the onset some of that may have worked. At the half, Pickett had made one of five field goal attempts.
“I feel like right now Kellen is a marked man,” said the Raiders fellow inside post presence Michael Imariagbe, a 6-foot-7, 225-pound grad who Thursday night had 19 points and six rebounds.
“Some teams try to push him around and start with physicality so he doesn’t get all the way to the rim because he’s a very good finisher.”
Thursday was Imariagbe’s 126th college game and with his style of play, were he wearing an opposing uniform, he’d likely be trying the muscle and menace the Raiders’ teenager, too.
And yet he now knows that doesn’t work that well:
“He’s somebody you’ve got to watch out for. I’m in there thinking I’m getting this rebound right here and here comes the 7-footer – well, close to 7 footer – and he snags it from me. He snags every rebound. I love that from him. He’s got a very high IQ for a freshman.”
Burch said Pickett and fellow freshman point guard Michael Cooper were given a “grow up” directive in the summer:
“Coach was telling Coop and Kellen, ‘Nobody (here) cares that you are freshmen. And we’re not going to treat you as freshmen. In our eyes, that doesn’t matter.’”
Pickett appreciated that approach:
“Coach Sargent saying that gave me the confidence I needed. If he thinks I have the ability to do it, then I have confidence in myself.
That connection with Sargent is one big reason he became a Raider, Pickett said.
‘No hard feelings’
Coming out of Blackhawk Christian — which he helped lead to a 2A state title in 2023 and the regional tournament last March — he had offers from several schools, including Miami, Toledo, Ball State, Indiana State, Central Florida, Purdue-Fort Wayne and Valparaiso.
“Within the first hour of my visit here I knew that I was coming here,” Pickett said. “I liked everything: the opportunity, the coaches, the teammates, the culture. For me, it was a no-brainer.”
That’s not saying he wouldn’t have been swayed had he been recruited by bigger programs.
“I’ve always dreamed of playing up as high as I can,” he said.
As for his lack of any upper echelon offers, he said he didn’t think it was because he played at a small high school.
“I also played for Indiana Elite, which is really good,” he said.
The southern Indiana AAU program has had 20 of its players make the NBA and 50 get Division I college scholarships.
“Plenty of college coaches saw me” he said. “I guess they didn’t like what they saw. But no hard feelings.”
Credit: JEREMY MILLER
Credit: JEREMY MILLER
Those views likely are changing.
Pickett is blossoming this season. He leads the Raiders in blocked shots; is second in rebounding (5.3); and sixth in scoring (7.8.)
He especially came on down the stretch in the second half Thursday.
With the victory, the Raiders are 18-10 and in first place in the league with a 13-4 record.
The WSU program is starting to draw attention now and so is Pickett.
There’s always the concern that those disinterested suitors of the past will have a different mindset come late March and with college basketball now a grab bag thanks to the transfer portal and NIL money, no roster — especially those of mid-majors and non-Power 4 schools — is safe.
A couple of years ago, Koby Brea, the Dayton Flyers deadeye shooter from long range, was enticed to play for Kentucky in his final season. It was reported he got $1 million in NIL money and he made it to the NBA.
Last season the Miami RedHawks had a promising man in 7-foot-1 Reece Potter. Kentucky ended up with him as well this season. He doesn’t play. It’s said he got $300,000 to be a practice team player to help develop the current Cats big men.
Pickett knows some of those stories, but when I asked if something like that could end up being his tale as well, he showed that he has learned how to fend off anyone trying to muscle in.
“I love it here,” he said. “I feel it’s God’s plan for me to be here right now.”
And that’ll be the same next year?
“That’s the plan.”
He said that same phrase four times over the next 40 seconds:
“Yes sir, that’s the plan.”
Finally, he cracked a smile that lit up his face, including the shiner where you noticed the gold as much as the black.
He knows, in more ways than one, he is a marked man.
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