BETHANY – Winning back-to-back regular season titles in your conference is pretty uncommon. But winning three consecutive regular season titles is simply ludicrous. No. 22 ranked Southern Nazarene did the ludicrous on Thursday night as their 67-59 win over Southern Arkansas clinched a share of the Great American Conference regular season title for the third straight year. Three Peat Complete.
 
Amidst this unbelievable achievement, the Crimson Storm (22-7, 16-5 GAC) won their 12^th straight game inside the Sawyer Center as they held the Muleriders (13-14, 10-11 GAC) to 16.7 percent shooting from 3-point range. Another GAC record was broken tonight, make that two straight records in two straight games to be exact, as Jhonathan Dunn shattered the single-season scoring record. Also with the victory, SNU clinched the No. 1 seed in the GAC Championships next week for the third straight season.
 
He finished with a game-high 29 points on 12-of-24 shooting and 5-of-11 shooting from 3-point range to go along with nine rebounds and three assists. Dunn's 11^th point of the contest pushed him to 742 for the season, passing ECU's former standout Braxton Reeves' record of 741 points.
 
Dunn was the only SNU scorer to finish in double-figures but Micah Speight loaded up the stat sheet like usual with eight points, a season-high 12 assists, and three rebounds. Tyler Williams added nine points, four rebounds and an assist while Maik Bouwer collected eight points and four rebounds.
 
SNU shot 46.3 percent from the floor and just 36.4 percent from behind the 3-point line as the Storm hit their fewest 3-pointers on their home floor since December. Southern Arkansas out-rebounded the Storm 32-28 and had 40 points in the paint, but the 3-point line is what made the difference as the Muleriders made just 3-of-18 attempts.
 
The stifling Southern Nazarene defense was on full display as they made life difficult on SAU for most of the night. SNU quickly jumped out to a 14-7 lead and later pushed it to 18-11 after a Bouwer layup midway through the opening frame. Southern Arkansas shot 47 percent from the field in the first half and that's what allowed them to hang around. Ashton Charles put down a dunk to bump SNU's lead to 23-15 as the Crimson Storm took a 30-23 lead into the halftime break.
 
SNU turned up the heat in the second half, as they pushed their lead to 35-26 after a Dunn layup with 17:27 to play. Charles made a free-throw a few minutes later to increase the lead to double-digits for the first time all evening. The Storm got their lead up to 46-33 before the Muleriders quickly went on a 7-0 run to cut it to 46-40 with 10:40 to play. SNU used strong defense in the final 10 minutes of action to close out SAU and win their 16^th conference game of the season.
 
Southern Nazarene will look to clinch the regular season title outright on Saturday afternoon as they take on Arkansas-Monticello on Senior Day inside the Sawyer Center. Tipoff is scheduled for 3:00 p.m.