BETHANY, Okla. — Since Southern Nazarene made the move to NCAA Division II, the athletics department has had regular season conference title in women's soccer, a co-conference title in women's tennis and a GAC Tournament win in volleyball, but had never captured an outright regular season title in any sport.
 
You can add that first title, in what there hopes to be many more along the way, as the Crimson Storm men's basketball team downed East Central, 74-71, to score the department's first outright Great American Conference regular season title.
 
The Crimson Storm (21-1, 18-0 GAC) extended their winning streak to a single-season record 17 straight. One more win ties the overall program record of 18 that extended over two years. After having just four games in single digits in the first half of the conference season, SNU has had five of their seven games go down to the final minutes.
 
The Storm held a five-point lead twice early in the first half and were up 17-12 with 13:59 left when East Central went on a 19-4 run to take its biggest lead of the game at 31-21 with 7:31 on the block. The Storm started to slowly chip it away and got to 40-36 at the half.
 
SNU opened the second half on a 22-6 run to take a 58-46 lead on a Noah Starkey jumper to lead 58-46 with 8:13 to play.  SNU led 60-48 with 7:38 left when ECU started chipping away at the lead. The Tigers used a 23-12 run to get within one at 72-71 with 34 seconds left, but two free throws by Zach Johnson and stout defense down the stretch won it for SNU.
 
Jhonathan Dunn, Noah Starkey and Micah Speight combined for 54 of SNU's points. Dunn led the way with 20 while Noah Starkey had 18. Speight also had 16. Starkey added eight rebounds and five blocks, which brought him just two blocks away from setting the school record for career blocks. Speight added five rebounds and three steals as well. Quaylon Newton also chipped in with eight points and seven rebounds.
 
The Storm had to hold off a hot-shooting Tigers (13-9, 11-7 GAC) team who hit 12 3-pointers on the night with nine coming in the first half. Gabe McKenzie paced East Central with 25 points as he went 7-for-8 from downtown.  ECU shot 24-for-58 from the field, but went just 11-for-19 at the line.
 
The Storm shot 52 percent from the field and went 5-for-14 from deep. SNU went 17-for-20 at the line to mark their fourth straight game of over 75 percent at the stripe.
The win secures the top spot at the GAC Championships March 1-4 at Bartlesville High School and gives  SNU one of the two Thursday games on the men's side.