Sophomore
Nick Barbour (Danville, Va./George Washington) of the men’s basketball team has had a season full of career highlights. He scored 38 points in the Panther’s season opener against UNC Pembroke, shooting 13-for-16, including 10-for-11 on 3-pointers. He posted 20 points in the first half of HPU’s win over Liberty. He has started all 21 of High Point’s games and is leading the team with an 18.8 points per game average.
This week he added to the highlight reel, scoring the winning basket to give High Point the 82-80 overtime win at Gardner-Webb. Barbour had 30 points in the game and scored the two most important baskets of the game, one to tie the game and send it to overtime and one to win the game. His late game heroics earned the Danville, Va. native High Point University Student-Athlete Feature honors. Each week throughout the athletic year a student-athlete who has done something significant or unique will be featured on
highpointpanthers.com.
“It felt good to get the game-winning shot because I had the opportunity for the game winner against VMI and missed it,” Barbour said. “It was really nice to get this one. I think the 38-point game is more special though because I did it with 10 3-pointers. I haven’t done that in a game since I was playing AAU.”
Barbour’s success on the court this season is a credit to his preparation. But it isn’t just practice that is giving him the competitive edge, it is his pregame rituals.
“I have two things I have to do every game,” he said. “The first is that I have to eat cookies before every game. Most of the time I go down to Subway and get either double chocolate cookies or oatmeal, it doesn’t really matter what kind, I just have to have cookies and water. The other is that I always play in black socks. I don’t really remember when it started, sometime in high school I must have had a good game and I have been wearing black socks ever since.”
Barbour is a graphic design major and said that balancing schoolwork and practice is never easy.
“A lot of people don’t understand how hard it is to be both a student and an athlete,” he said. “People think we get all kinds of perks and special treatment but it can be hard to balance basketball and homework. I am always catching up on what I miss while on the road. It is a challenge but I knew what I was signing up for.”
The nature of the work for his graphic design classes adds to the difficulty of doing work on road trips.
“I can’t just do reading on the bus. I have to do art projects and they are hard to do on the bus. The last couple of days I was trying to sketch out some ideas on the bus and it wasn’t working at all. The bus is bumpy and there has been a lot of swerving and breaking with the bad weather so I messed up a lot.”
When Barbour manages to get caught up on his class work and practice is over he said he likes to hang out with his teammates and watch movies. While many of his teammates have listed The Orphan as their favorite movie, Nick likes his movies a little lighter.
“My favorite movie is Happy Feet,” Barbour said. “I don’t know what it is about dancing penguins but they are hilarious. I used to watch that movie all the time with my nine-year-old sister and it became my favorite too. I have it in my room and watch it a lot. The tapping of the feet is just funny.”