'They Lost Their Church. They Lost Their School': How SFA's Nathan Bain Honored His Family Who Lost Everything to Dorian

In stunning upset earlier this week, the No. 1 Duke Blue Devils fell to the unranked Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks on Tuesday night.  The Lumberjacks' Nathan Bain made a layup as the game clock counted down.  

As a stunned Blue Devils crowd looked on, the players from the little school in East Texas swarmed Bain in an embrace that seemed to go on forever.  

Bain had seen the effort by his teammate for the rebound, he told The Albany Herald. 

"I saw my teammate grab it, and I looked up at the clock. We had about 2.6 seconds. I said, 'I've got to get on my horse'," he said. "I just go as fast as I can to try and lay it up. It's like a layup drill, and I can feel the dude on my back, so I laid it up and prayed it goes in."

As he released the ball with less than a second remaining, he thought, "Get it on the rim just to give us a chance."

As the video of the final play showed, Bain made it look easy. 

But for this graduate student, life this past year has been anything but easy. 

Bain, 24, is from Freeport, Bahamas.  Earlier this year, when Hurricane Dorian swept across the Bahamas, it took almost everything Bain's family owned.

He has been in the US since 2012 when he came to play for Sunrise Christian Academy located in Bel Aire, Kansas.

Bain's father, a minister of the gospel, watched as the storm pummeled the church building where he preached. Photos of the damage to the building show its studs completely bare as the storm ripped most of the drywall away.  The contents of the building were tossed around like toys, leaving a soggy mess.

During a post-game interview, Lumberjacks Head Coach Kyle Keller told the Blue Devils television audience about the trials Bain had endured this year.

"'Cause this kid, he's from the Bahamas. His family's lost their house. They have a school with 600 kids. They lost their church. They lost their school. This kid's only had everything on his body operated on. He means so much to us and this program. He embodies everything," Keller said.

Bain did his best to fight back tears as he spoke to the announcers from the court. 

"I'm trying real hard not to get emotional," he said. "My family lost a whole lot this year -- woo, not going to cry on TV," the graduate student said. " My family lost a whole lot this year, and I'm just playing this game for them -- just playing for my SFA family, my family back home in the Bahamas. I just want to make my country proud."

"When everything happened on the earlier side of the year, they (teammates) had my back and I just wanted to return the favor," Bain said as he began to cry. 

According to The Herald, after the game, tens of thousands of dollars in donations were given to a GoFundMe account that the university had set up for Bain's family. Several contributors gave $23 as a way to honor Bain's jersey number. 

As of Wednesday night, more than $82,000 had been collected, far surpassing the $50,000 goal.  

However, it was Coach Keller who never lost sight of what's important.  During his television interview he recalled at one point during the game, he looked over at one of his assistants and said, "Are you having as much fun as I am?"

Watch Bain make the winning shot and see his post-game interview below: