Duke University is a
juggernaut in the world of men’s college basketball. They get the best players,
have arguably the best coach and get the best media coverage. Which might
explain why there are so many ‘ABD-ers’, as in ‘Anybody But Duke’ fans. So, on
a Tuesday night in November, in a game which #1 Duke was favored with the most
lopsided odds of the season, the boys of Stephen F. Austin (I don’t know; look
it up) took on Duke. A couple of
hours later Duke was undefeated no more. In a last second play, SFA’s Nathan
Bain made the shot heard round the basketball universe.
That’s interesting to
basketball fans, but here is why everyone else should care, and why maybe God
did too.
Nathan Bain is from the
Bahamas. Hurricane Dorian decimated his family’s home, community and his
father’s church and school. A Go Fund Me
page was set up to help. Before the upset of Duke the website had collected
$2,000.00. On the day after the UPSET OF
THE YEAR (so far), the Bain fund had collected over $62,000.00. Now the church
and school will be rebuilt, along with the community around it, and God will be
worshipped and children will be educated.
SFA’s Bain says it best himself in an interview quoted by espn.com:
"That's really our
main focus, to make sure everyone has a place to worship and to make sure the
school is taken care of so these kids can get a proper education."
I don’t know if God cares
whether SFA beat Duke, but I am guessing that God answered a lot of prayers
that night in a way that very few expected.
And in the end, of course, God won.
The takedown of Duke by
Stephen F. Austin will likely be lost in the hype of March Madness as Coach K
leads his young team toward an NCAA Championship. It will be remembered in the Bahamas for a
long, long time. And that, as they say,
is why they play the game and why maybe, just maybe, God does care who wins.
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