MC grad Rojas Rojas joins international roster at Utah State University Eastern

Modesto Christian High School graduate Nico Rojas Rojas will continue his basketball career at Utah State University Eastern.

The announcement was made by former NBA player Chuck Hayes, who coached Rojas Rojas this summer with the Chuck Hayes Basketball under-17 team. Rojas Rojas is the first player from the first-year AAU program to receive a full-ride scholarship.

Utah State University Eastern is a two-year community college that competes in one of the nation’s premier conferences – the Scenic West Athletic Conference. The SWAC helped launch Bryce Harper’s baseball career. Harper was the 2010 SWAC Player of the Year and Golden Spikes Award winner at the College of Southern Nevada.

“Nico played with the program for 3 months,” Hayes wrote in his Facebook post, “in that span played in 6 national tournaments, against the top players in the country, in front of 40+ college coaches this summer. And all it took was ONE school to fall in love with him and he found a home. Couldn’t be more proud for this young man, would literally run thru (sic) a wall for his coaches and teammates, a coaches dream.”

Rojas Rojas averaged 4.4 points and 2.9 rebounds as a senior at Modesto Christian, a two-time CIF Northern California Open Division finalist. The 6-foot-4 forward came on strong late in the season, scoring a career-best 16 points in a 61-49 victory over Sheldon-Sacramento in a regional quarterfinal.

He also had seven rebounds and helped Modesto Christian erase a 14-point deficit in the third quarter with a 22-0 surge.

“Without him, we wouldn’t have won that game,” Modesto Christian coach Richard Midgley said after the game. “He played the best game of his life.”

A native of Bogota, Colombia, Rojas Rojas joins an international roster at Utah State University Eastern. Coach Vando Becheli is a native of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and his roster will read like a world map. Becheli has recruited players from Brazil, Lithuania, Nigeria, Senegal and Spain.

Rojas Rojas becomes the sixth player from the Crusaders’ 2015-16 roster to commit to a two- or four-year program.

All-District co-Players of the Year Christian Ellis and Robinson Idehen earned Division I scholarships. Ellis, headed to Southern Illinois Edwardsville, averaged 12.1 points, 6.0 rebounds and 4.8 assists last season. The 6-10 Idehen, bound for Western Kentucky, led the team with 15.8 points, 8.7 rebounds and 2.8 blocks.

Shooting guard Jay Chen on Monday flew to Des Moines, Iowa, home of Grand View, an NAIA school that competes in the Heart of America Athletic Conference. Chen averaged 7.8 points and connected on 36.3 percent of his three-point attempts and 80.3 percent of his free throws.

Jordan Hollins-Buckner and Josthin Dawkins, another Chuck Hayes Basketball product, have enrolled at Fresno City College, which has won three state championships since 2005.

Hollins-Buckner averaged 7.3 points and finished second on the team in three-pointers (37). Dawkins was third on the team in scoring at 8.0 points.

“We’re very proud of all those guys’ efforts, in season as well as out of season,” Midgley said. “For us, the reward is seeing them, individually, be able to continue their education while playing basketball. It’s the reason we do this.”

This story was originally published August 15, 2016 at 10:41 AM with the headline "MC grad Rojas Rojas joins international roster at Utah State University Eastern."