There is something special about hearing a mother talk about her son’s finest athletic hour — and when Ashell Bain relives the most electrifying upset of this college basketball season, the pride radiates, even through an international telephone line. When I spoke to the mother of one of this year’s biggest underdog heroes, I could feel it.
Ashell’s son Nathan Bain was largely unknown to the wider sports community two weeks ago, right up until the thrilling moment in which his final second coast-to-coast buzzer beater sealed an epic 85-83 triumph for Stephen F. Austin over then-No.1 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Nov. 26.
It was the biggest shock in men’s college basketball for 15 years. (Duke went into the game as a 27.5-point favorite.) Duke hadn’t lost a home non-conference matchup for 19 years — over 150 games. Everything since has been a whirlwind.
Nathan’s postgame interview highlighted the plight of his family and community in Freeport, the Bahamas, which is still battling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Dorian. “My family lost a whole lot this year,” he said.
Almost immediately, complete strangers responded en masse, flooding the GoFundMe page the 6’6 senior forward had set up for his family with well-wishes and donations, pushing the tally from $2,000 up to an eventual $150,000.
“You have no idea how (many) folks you’re helping,” Bain said, addressing the donors via TMZ Sports. “How (many) families and lives you’re going to change because there’s still folks back home without constant water, without shoes, without clothes, that this money is going to go towards.”
Ashell is still receiving phone calls from friends and neighbors and gets stopped in the street in Freeport by locals wanting to talk about the Duke game. Talking about her son is a joy at any time, she says, but especially for a reason as positive as this one.
But the call she cherishes the most was the one she got a few minutes after the end of the overtime thriller, one in which Stephen F. Austin confounded logic by outrebounding the Blue Devils and holding their nerve down the stretch against a team full of NBA prospects.
Nathan Bain normally waits until the day after a game to phone his parents, but there was no chance of that this time.
“Did you see it, mom?” he shouted, as the Stephen F. Austin locker room erupted in celebration around him.
“See it?” Ashell replied. “Well, here’s the thing ... ”
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Nathan Bain has had a busy couple of weeks. Stephen F. Austin have been back in action, their record reaching 7-2 after a pair of victories over Arkansas State and Arlington Baptist, and a road loss to Alabama.
He’s been getting used to the attention and turning his thoughts back to his homeland. His father, Norris Bain, runs Tabernacle Baptist Church in Freeport and is principal of the affiliated school. When Dorian hit, the family home was completely destroyed and the school and church suffered significant damage.
As of October, 67 people were killed as a result of Dorian, with a further 282 missing.
“This is a chance to not focus so much on the devastation but on something good,” Ashell told me. “The past week has given people something exciting to talk about.”
And, in the Bahamas, everyone still wants to talk about it, from those who caught up with the developments on the next morning’s news or by word of mouth, or those who, like Ashell, watched the game on an internet stream late at night.
They talk a bit about the upset, about the significance of beating Duke, about the extraordinary resilience of an underdog team on the night it ripped up the script.
Most of all though, they talk about that basket. The basket that Ashell didn’t see.
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As time wound down, Stephen F. Austin was holding it together. The Lumberjacks were coming on strong, having overturned a five-point halftime deficit. Duke was getting nervous. The Cameron Crazies could scarcely comprehend what they were seeing.
There was 1:31 on the clock. And in the Bain’s temporary residence on Freeport, in a confluence of outrageously bad timing, the internet went down.
With the kind of quick thinking that her son would soon display on the court, Ashell immediately called a family friend, Nathan’s old high school basketball coach. For the remainder of the game, he was their color commentator.
In the waning seconds of overtime, Duke tried to get the last shot. Tre Jones missed. Wendell Moore got the rebound, but lost it in a scramble. The ball ended in the hands of Nathan Bain, who charged up the court and straight into college hoops folklore.
“Our friend did a fine job on commentary,” Ashell said. “But the last few minutes, it was just like madness. It was hard to follow what was going on and then suddenly he was telling us that the team had won and that Nathan had scored the winning basket.
“Nathan is a hard worker and we are incredibly proud. Of course, as a parent you are so happy for him to have had this success with his teammates, but I know it means a lot to him that it has become such a positive thing for his community here.”
There are decisions to be made; the distribution of goodwill on the kind of scale now required is a major undertaking, albeit an uplifting one.
There are so many to be helped, lives to be pieced back together after the destruction of Dorian. But now there is a happy memory to reflect on too, one that sparked a chain reaction that reinforced our faith in the power of sports to do good.
Ashell Bain might not have seen her son streak down the court and topple the mighty Duke, but she’ll never forget it.
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