FORT COLLINS — Transfers and junior college players. That’s how Larry Eustachy’s teams are supposed to be built, right?

That was the case last season when he led the Rams to a single-season program-record 27 wins, and it looked to be again entering this season.

But with Colorado State now midway through the 2015-16 campaign and past the first week of conference play, something strange has happened.

Partly out of necessity (with Gian Clavell lost for the season with a broken hand), and partly by design, the Rams have been getting major contributions from a pair of freshmen.

The season-long stats for guards Prentiss Nixon, a true freshman, and J.D. Paige, a redshirt freshman, don’t jump off the page — Paige is averaging 5.9 points, 1.9 rebounds and 1.5 assists; Nixon 5.4/2.3/1.3. But the pair has unquestionably made a huge impact for CSU (9-6, 1-1), supplying the program a sense of optimism not just for the rest of this season but for the future as well.

They’re coming off the bench now and playing supporting roles, but eventually Eustachy sees both developing into all-conference caliber players.

“It’s like having two great quarterbacks, in the future and right now. They have stepped up big,” Eustachy said. “I think they’re both high-major guards, which is what you need at this level to contend for the league.”

If the name J.D. Paige sounds familiar but not quite right that’s because the 6-foot-3 guard from Rangeview High School in Aurora used to go by Jeremiah. After redshirting last year, he figured this season was the perfect time to switch it up.

“I was like OK, a new start, a new beginning, I’ll go by J.D.,” he said.

The switch to J.D. hasn’t caught on entirely as Eustachy still refers to him as Jeremiah. But that might have changed when Paige almost single-handedly rallied CSU to a thrilling 66-65 win over UNLV on Wednesday when he scored seven of his team’s final eight points to erase a five-point deficit with less than a minute to play.

“Maybe he earned J.D. after last night,” Eustachy said Thursday.

Paige and Nixon are only part of a promising crop of young Rams that also includes true freshmen Nico Carvacho and Anthony Bonner, who are redshirting — but not because Eustachy doesn’t think they’re capable of producing right now.

“I’m not sure if we had to do it over again that I wouldn’t play all three (true freshmen, Carvacho, Bonner and Nixon) right now,” Eustachy said. “Selfishly, for early returns I could have done it. But when I’m thinking long term, where we want to get to, your upperclassmen are the reason you win or lose championships.

“To have those two that are sitting right now will be helpful. We had to pick somebody (to play) because of the numbers on the team. We had to pick who we thought was most ready, particularly at the guard spot. … Prentiss body-wise was ahead of Bonner.”

Here for the long haul

Now, on to what many Rams fans might be thinking … What are the chances both Nixon and Paige — and Carvacho and Bonner for that matter — stick around for four years?

It’s a reasonable question considering just one player on the team right now, guard Joe De Ciman, is in his fourth season with the program. That’s because two of the more promising high school recruits during Eustachy’s time at CSU, guards Carlton Hurst and David Cohn, both transferred to other Division I programs.

Nixon and Paige, however, insist they’re here for the long haul.

“Most definitely,” Paige said.

“I’m not gong nowhere,” Nixon added.

Call it nonsense, but there’s good reason both might actually follow in De Ciman’s footsteps as they each have built-in connections to the program.

Paige’s grandfather, Larry Paige, played at CSU from 1976-78 before being selected by the Los Angeles Lakers in the ’78 NBA draft. And Nixon’s dad, Tracey Nixon, is actually a childhood friend of CSU assistant coach Leonard Perry — something none of them knew about until the Rams were the first team to start recruiting Nixon back when he was a sophomore growing up in Bolingbrook, Ill., a western suburb of Chicago.

“Coach Perry came to recruit me and he didn’t know that I was my dad’s son,” the 6-1 guard said. “He saw my dad and that’s when they kinda started talking again. They had grown up together and known each other for a long time.”

If Nixon and Paige do stick around, Eustachy knows how valuable that would be for the program, and not just in terms of wins and losses.

“I think it’s why the most popular group since I’ve been here was Pierce (Hornung’s). It helps attendance eventually, because you can really relate to these guys for a longer period of time,” the coach said. “That’s probably when we’ve had our best crowds, our first year, because they identified with these guys for so long. They just watched them grow up.

“You just saw Jeremiah take a big leap forward, so you can say you were there and can keep following them. Plus they’re great kids.”

Sean Star: 970-669-5050, sstar@reporter-herald.com or twitter.com/seanvstar