I think we all forgot about Nate Pickens. But it's not your fault. It's not my fault.
With all the excitement caused by the transfer portal, it can be easy to get distracted. Collin Chandler, BYU basketball's prodigal son, has finally returned and will join the team for his junior season after two years with Kentucky. Rob Wright III, last year's starting point guard, is weighing his options between a return to Provo and, somehow Mark Pope and Kentucky -- this is all after Wright stated multiple times that he planned to be back at BYU, barring a call up to the NBA.
A 7-footer from UConn could fill all of BYU basketball's needs after losing three centers from last year's team. A sharp-shooting power forward from Syracuse who knocked down 44% of his threes in conference play just transferred to join the team. Kevin Young and his staff have seemingly countless hooks in the transfer pond, and Cougar Nation is desperately anticipating every nibble.
So how on Earth was anybody supposed to remember that one of last season's key contributors is still with the BYU basketball program, and ready to fill in the gaps for Kevin Young's depth chart.
Allow me to re-introduce you to Nate Pickens, a transfer from UC Riverside who missed the entire 2025-26 season with a preseason injury -- the first of many to fall from that year's injury-plagued roster. Pickens was projected as the Cougars' sixth man, sharing that designation with Dawson Baker (don't think too hard about the math on that one. Both were key rotation players off the bench).
While Baker is a scoring aficionado capable of creating his own shot -- and will return for one final season after missing the majority of last year with a knee injury of his own -- Pickens' role was that of a defensive stopper at the other end, and a brawny, powerful scorer at the other end with a deadly mid-range jumper.
Pickens was the muscle that BYU desperately missed on the perimeter as the Big 12's offenses tore the Cougar defenses to pieces. Capable of taking the stress off Dybantsa at either end of the floor, his presence was badly missed.
He carries extreme confidence on his shoulders. Unafraid and unbothered by what the other team threw in his direction, he could do damage at all three levels of offense: three-point, mid-range, and at the rim. He boasted 9.8 points per game in his junior season with UC Riverside, torching the net on 39.2% from three, while adding 2.1 assists. 3.5 rebounds, 0.8 steals, and 0.4 blocks per night.
Look no further for the ideal lubricant of Kevin Young's offensive machine, and a more than capable defender on top of that.
I'm sure you can recall how unbalanced and star-dependent last year's basketball team was -- Nate Pickens would have been the ideal stabilizer. It's a shame we never got to see him paired with the Cougars' Big 3, because that team was going places were it not for the injury bug.
Again, don't kick yourself over this; we all forgot about Nate Pickens as he spent his season at the end of the bench. But barring another injury, he'll help us remember when the season tips off.
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