Every week, the Sports Information department will post a "Did You Know?" tidbit to the website.

This week's interesting tidbit is: Purchase College junior Rashid Nikiema was named to the All-Metropolitan Basketball Writers Associtation (MBWA) Division III Third Team, it was announced Tuesday.

The MBWA covers 71 colleges in the New York Metropolitan area and is made up of 21 Division I, 14 Division II and 36 Division III schools. Nikiema was one of just 20 players to be honored on one of the three All-Met Teams this year.

A force all season for the Panthers, Nikiema (Winooski, VT) averaged 19.2 points, 6.2 rebounds, 2.2 assists and 1.3 blocks per game.

His points per game were third most in the conference, while his rebounding average was 14th overall best.

As for shooting, the junior was a star the entire year - finishing fourth in overall shooting percentage, fourth in 3-pointers, first in free throws and second in 3-pointers per game.

On the defensive end, he was equally as great landing in fourth in blocks per game and tied for 11th in steals per game as well.

For the season, Nikiema played in 23 games with 22 starts. During the first 19 games, he scored double digits in each contest, including a season-high 36 against Mitchell College in December.

With the recognition, Rashid has now been honored 18 times on the year, including 11 awards from the Skyline Conference (All-Skyline Conference First Team, 3x Player of the Week, 7x Honor Roll) and seven times from the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Associtation (MBWA).

Nikiema became the first Purchase player to be recognized for an All-Met team since Elijah Lott '20 back in 2020.

As for the Panthers, they finished the regular season 14-12 overall and 10-6 in the league. Both win totals were team-best marks since that aforementioned 2019-20 season.

To read the full MBWA release, click here.