The Tribune

By RENALDO DORSETT

Tribune Sports Reporter

rsorsett@tribunemedia.net

Months after he garnered the attention of the college basketball world and brought awareness to The Bahamas’ post Dorian restoration efforts with his late game heroics, Nathan Bain continues to be a leading playmaker for the Stephen F Austin Lumberjacks.

Bain has posted season high scoring totals in back-to-back games as the Lumberjacks progress toward postseason play.

The senior wing finished with 17 points and nine rebounds - both season highs - in Stephen F Austin’s 70-64 win over the Nicholls State Colonels Wednesday night. He was on the floor for 33 of 40 minutes, just one short of his season-high in minutes played.

It marked their seventh consecutive win and 13th in their last 14 games. They also improved to 20-3 and 11-1 in Southland Conference play.

Bain shot 2-4 from three point range (7-13 from the field) and the team finished 5-11. SFA is one of just six Division I men’s basketball programs with 20 or more wins after the victory.

Wednesday night’s win was the second consecutive game Bain was among the team leaders in scoring.

He finished with a then season-high 16 points in an 81-76 win Saturday on the road in a win over the Sam Houston State Bearkats.

Bain shot an efficient 5-8 from the field and was a perfect 6-6 from the free throw line. He also added six rebounds, four assists and four steals in 29 minutes.

He has scored in double figures four games this season and is currently averaging 5.2 points and 3.3 rebounds per game.

Bain highlighted his college basketball career and arguably the entire NCAA season when his buzzer beating layup capped one of the most improbable upsets in the history of the game.

He raced up court to finish a layup just before time expired to lift his unranked Lumberjacks to an 85-83 overtime win over then No.1 Duke Blue Devils in November, the biggest upset in NCAA Division I basketball of the last 20 years.

The Blue Devils came into the game favoured by 27.5 points marking it the largest betting spread for a no.1 seed to suffer a loss. Duke had never lost to a mid-major team when ranked No. 1 until that loss at Cameron Indoor Stadium. SFA’s win ended Duke’s 150-game non conference home winning streak. The last loss of that kind came at the hands of the St. John’s Red Storm in 1999. It was also the first time since 1983 that Duke has lost to an unranked mid-major team.

Bain finished with 11 points, five rebounds and three steals. As a result of the shot, Bain was featured on a myriad of American media outlets and became a national story chronicled by ESPN Sportscenter, Good Morning America, and CNN.

In September, the Lumberjacks established crowdsourced fundraising through a GoFundMe account to assist the Grand Bahama native’s family in the fallout from Dorian. Over the course of approximately two months, the page raised just over $2000 but since Bain’s game winning layup, it became the most popular page on the GoFundMe platform. It eventually raised $151,740.

As a true freshman, Bain saw time in 24 of SFA’s 34 contests.He posted averages of 2.4 points, 2.1 rebounds and 7.5 minutes per game.

As a sophomore, he suffered a back injury that significantly shortened his 2016-17 season. He took part in only three games for SFA before getting sidelined and receiving a medical redshirt. As a redshirt sophomore, he appeared in 24 of the ‘Jacks’ 35 games and averaged 2.0 points, 0.8 rebounds, 0.3 assists, 0.5 steals and 0.3 blocked shots in 6.4 minutes per game.

Last season, Bain averaged 5.8 points and 4.1 rebounds per game in his junior season, both career highs.