NCAA Basketball: Stephen F. Austin, Jordan Burns top mid-major performers
By Logan Butts
Feast Week provided NCAA Basketball fans with a cornucopia of exciting action. Which mid-major players and teams stood out?
Best Performance, Team – Stephen F. Austin
Who else could it be? Just when we thought the upset of the year was already permanently written in ink, Stephen F. Austin came in with a magic eraser.
The Lumberjacks went into Cameron Indoor Stadium and knocked off the top team in the country 85-83 on this wild final play of overtime. Duke had won 150 consecutive home games against non-conference opponents, nearly 100 wins longer than the next closest streak (Butler with 55).
Nathan Bain, the player who made the game-winning layup, found himself on the receiving end of a number of donations after the nationally-noticed upset. The fifth-year senior’s family home and church were nearly destroyed during Hurricane Dorian earlier this year.
The win also sparked an intriguing debate on College Basketball Twitter: was this the biggest win in school history? At first glance, it seems obvious. Of course, taking down the No. 1-ranked Duke Blue Devils at Cameron Indoor would be the biggest win in the history of any mid-major school and several Power-5 schools.
But, it is just a regular-season win, unlike the pair of NCAA Tournament First-Round upsets the Lumberjacks have pulled in the last decade. Personally, I would take the win as a 14-seed over West Virginia (they also got robbed in their Second Round game against Notre Dame, so it could’ve been a Sweet 16 run for SFU), but the Duke upset is also monumental. It’s a good problem to have.
Back-to-back No. 1’s went down at home to mid-majors. What a time to be a mid-major fan.
Other Power-5 upsets this week included: New Mexico over Wisconsin at the Legends Classic, Colorado State over Washington State in the Cayman Islands, Bradley over Kansas State in Fort Myers, UNI over South Carolina in Cancun, Harvard and Fairfield over Texas A&M in Orlando, San Diego State over Iowa in Las Vegas, and UNC G winning at Georgetown. Gotta love Feast Week.