BUCHANAN, Mich. ― Friday night was yet another example of how Niles Brandywine has become a high school known for its basketball despite an enrollment of 351 students.
In a boys/girls varsity doubleheader against the rival Buchanan Bucks December 19, the Bobcats swept the night to reach a combined 10-0 so far on the young MHSAA season.
“It’s my life, really,” Nylen Goins, a senior boys standout, said. “I started playing when I was four years old. I love basketball.”
Most recently, the boys hoops team won a state championship in 2023-24, while the lady Bobcats have made MHSAA Division 3 final four appearances each of the past two seasons. The programs’ respective successes over the past near two decades have been spearheaded by Brandywine alumni and former Bobcats boys basketball teammates: head coaches Josh Hood and Nate Knapp.
Hood is in his 17th year as the Bobcats’ girls head coach, and he and Knapp started the Brandywine Kiddie Cats youth basketball program in 2010. In that time, he has led the Bobcats to a combined 355-38 record, making the D3 state semifinals on four occasions.
“It’s hard to play basketball at Brandywine,” Hood said. “We go at it six days a week. When you step into the gym Sunday morning, you have to be ready to go.”
Last season, Brandywine lost in the MHSAA state semifinal by just two points. The year prior, the Bobcats fell short of a MHSAA Division 3 state title by three points.
Despite losing seven seniors, three of whom were All-State selections, Brandywine girls basketball is 4-0 to start the 2025-26 season after beating Buchanan, 66-23, Friday.
“We talk about tradition, all the pressure and everything, but we also talk about responsibility,” Hood said. “Tradition doesn’t graduate. It’s a responsibility to hold yourself to a standard every day, and the rest will take care of itself.”
Nothing may represent that motto more than a freshman leading the Bobcats in scoring against the Bucks, with Zaya Price dropping 18 points. Her sister, junior MacKenna Price, wasn’t far behind with 17. Neither was junior Lily Gill with 14.
MacKenna was the Bobcats’ first player off the bench in their 27-1 campaign last season, and she acknowledged that her leap to becoming Brandywine’s point guard in the blink of an eye was a big one.
“I have to really stay confident in myself; I can’t let my emotions show to the other players,” Price said.
Some of that confidence she draws from originated when she was in seventh grade, when Hood often told her how excited he was to see her as his varsity point guard when she got older. A half decade later, that wish has come true for both.
“I think the culture of this team is based on him,” Price said. “Once we get into games, we know that we are one of the better teams out there.”
After graduating a senior class that went a combined 92-9, Hood heard rumblings that maybe this would be the season Brandywine girls basketball finally took a step back. That hasn’t happened, at least not yet.
Based on Hood’s track record, don’t count on it. However, Hood was adamant that he is only a small piece into the larger puzzle of why the Bobcats have been one of the best girls teams in Michigan for the better part of two decades.
“It’s the kids. When they buy in like they do and work hard, the coaches are such a small part of what we do,” Hood said. “They make Brandywine special.”
Weathering the storm
While Knapp has not had quite the same level of success as his good friend, he can boast a state championship and the better 2025-26 record so far. Brandywine’s boys squad is out to a 6-0 start after beating the Bucks 57-45 Friday.
He’s also two years older and been in his position three seasons longer. Knapp is even a grandfather ― and proud of it. His grandchildren swarmed him once he emerged from the locker room at Buchanan High School.
Goins, who led the Bobcats with 25 points against the Bucks, drew a comparison between Knapp’s kin and the team the 20-year head coach leads every winter.
“This team is like a family; We love each other,” Goins said.
Basketball is a lifestyle for Goins. He said he put up shots every day during the summer, getting to the gym as early as 6 a.m. and leaving as late as midnight on some occasions.
It’s the same for Knapp. That commonality makes coaching at Brandywine easy.
“The kids at our school ― they love basketball,” Knapp said. “Basketball is my bread and butter, and I love it. I think the kids feed off that a little bit.”
However, unlike Hood, Knapp didn’t find instant success and keep it that way. The boys squad finished with a losing record in eight of Knapp’s first nine seasons, and it wasn’t until Knapp hit a decade as the Bobcats’ coach that they finished with a winning record.
Once that happened in 2014-15, Brandywine boys basketball hasn’t had a losing season since.
“They’ve weathered a lot of storms,” Knapp said. “Classes started working, and they started seeing the success. They just kept buying in, and it just keeps growing.”
Reid McBeth, 25-year boys basketball coach and current athletic director at Buchanan, has a lot of respect for his cross-county rivals. After Brandywine’s basketball teams triumphed over the Bucks by a combined 55 points Friday, he summed up the Bobcats’ success like only someone with his unique perspective could.
“Josh has really built something special,” McBeth said. “[Nate] will have five or six years in a row where he’s really good, and then we’ll have five or six years in a row. Sometimes it feels like a decade since you’ve beaten somebody, then the next thing you know, you haven’t lost to them in years.”
Kyle Smedley is a sports reporter at the South Bend Tribune. Contact him via email at ksmedley@usatodayco.com or follow him on X @KyleSmedley03.
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: How Josh Hood and Nate Knapp turned Niles Brandywine into a basketball school
Reporting by Kyle Smedley, South Bend Tribune / South Bend Tribune
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