GRAND FORKS — The joy could be seen in Grant Nelson’s teammates’ faces.
Nelson was the last one announced in Alabama’s starting five. At first, the PA announcer stayed silent to let the moment build. The Crimson Tide players jumped repeatedly while waving their arms, looking up with knowing smiles at the crowd of UND and Alabama fans who made the trip to support the Devils Lake native.
“A 6-foot-11 graduate student,” the announcer eventually began, “from Devils Lake, North Dakota, No. 4., Grant Nelson!”
North Dakota stood up. “Devils Lake, North Dakota” was announced just like all the other players’ hometowns. But this one meant a little more.
“I just felt so much love,” Nelson said. “I’m super grateful for this experience, for the coaching staff for scheduling this game and giving these guys a show tonight.”
Alabama head coach Nate Oats understood the significance of this moment for Nelson.
“It was pretty cool. I would have hoped that they would have done that, with us coming back. I think the fans here were grateful that we came,” Oats said. “The people here really welcomed Grant back home. He grew up in Devils Lake, an hour and a half or so away. So I thought it was great.”
For probably the last time ever, Nelson got to play a basketball game in his home state on Wednesday. All the years of youth hoops, Firebird basketball and his tenure at NDSU culminated in a North Dakota homecoming at the Betty Engelstad Sioux Center. It was a sold-out crowd, with Nelson given 300 of his own tickets dedicated for family, friends and Devils Lake diehards.
“It was great to play in front of my hometown fans,” Nelson said. “All the people who supported me coming up through my basketball career — it’s great to give back to these guys.”
So Nelson and the Alabama Crimson Tide, ranked No. 6 in the country, flew up north to take on a 4-8 UND team. The Fighting Hawks nearly pulled off a stunner, leading at halftime in front of a booming crowd that screamed a lot louder for UND than it did for Alabama. But the Tide fended off a raucous stadium of North Dakotans and a 40-point performance by Treysen Eaglestaff, taking down UND 97-90.
“The atmosphere was great. The fans came ready to cheer,” Oats said. “Grant had a good section, but North Dakota had a lot of fans here too. We pulled up about two hours before the game, and there was a huge line waiting outside.”
When the rest of Nelson’s Alabama teammates stepped out of the bus, they weren’t used to the single-digit temperatures the way Nelson was. Many of the Tide players are from the south. But Nelson said they enjoyed some good food at a nice hotel, and the team made the most of its brief trip to Grand Forks.
“I thought it was great in the city,” Oats said. “A little bit cold, but I grew up in Wisconsin, lived in Detroit and Buffalo, so I’m used to it. Hopefully we get out of here before the snowstorm comes. But seemed like a real nice city… Probably don’t plan on coming back unless there’s a really good player in North Dakota we recruit.”
Oats followed his last comment with a chuckle. He was pivotal in making this occasion happen in the first place, graciously accepting UND head coach Paul Sather’s proposal.
“I want to give Coach Oats and Alabama a lot of credit for doing this. You don’t get a lot of Power Fives that come up and do this sort of thing,” Sather said. “And I told him, I don’t think you quite understand what it meant to our university, our community; what it meant to a player like Grant… I just really want to applaud Coach Oats, because when we asked, he absolutely responded ‘Yes’ right away.”
Nelson did his part in the win, putting up 23 points and 10 rebounds. Alabama had three blocks in the game, and all three belonged to Nelson. He showed off with a dunk in the first half. He hit a go-ahead bucket with less than two minutes to go, and knocked down a pair of critical free throws for Alabama’s final two points.
He was everything the hype had advertised.
“Grant was very good for most of the game. I thought he came ready to play,” Oats said. “He’s been a steady influence for us since he got [to Alabama]. And hopefully he can go off this one and continue to play well in SEC play.”
Nelson not only embodies a hometown hero, but a case study in how a small-town kid can get noticed and climb to increasingly higher levels.
Still, Nelson didn’t get here overnight. Coming out of Devils Lake High School as a Mr. Basketball winner, he only had two Division I offers: one from NDSU, and one from UND.
Nelson’s days with Sather go back to 2019, when Sathers was the head coach for Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota. Sather offered Nelson a scholarship to play for Northern State at the time. Sather was hired as UND’s new head coach for the 2019-20 season, and he continued to try getting Nelson to be a Hawk.
After the game on Wednesday, Sather told Nelson that he was proud of him.
“I think people think this has been an easy road for him, going to Alabama,” Sather said. “I remember as a freshman at North Dakota State, he was grinding. He was grinding to get on the floor; he was grinding to get minutes. A lot of kids sometimes don’t handle that adversity very well. And he fought. He developed there, and did an awesome job there.
“And with this opportunity at Alabama, that first year at Alabama wasn’t just easy and perfect. He fought to get on the floor. He fought to get time. He fought to earn his role. He didn’t just walk in there and become this monster that he is right now. It took a while. It just shows a lot of his character, his makeup and his maturity.”
The two of them met several times during Nelson’s three-year tenure with the Bison. Nelson was a constant nemesis for Sather and his Fighting Hawks team, putting up a career-high 36 points in their last matchup before Wednesday.
“I’ve known him a long time. I hated playing against him when he was at North Dakota State because he’s really good,” Sather said. “But it’s fun to see him have success. It’s fun to see him handle it with a lot of grace and a lot of respect.”
Though the Fighting Hawks took a tough loss, they showed nothing but humility in their postgame presser. On the other side, Oats was critical of his team’s performance, but he praised the novelty of the occasion and its significance for Nelson . It was bigger than basketball.
In a sense, everybody won: from the local fans who got to see and meet their local legend, to the UND players who gained incredible experience against a high-major team, to the general public that got to watch one heck of a basketball game.
It was a night that will go down in North Dakota history.
“I think these guys are gonna remember this experience the rest of their life,” Sather said. “I think this is gonna be one of those games, just because of the opponent, right? Your six-rated Alabama team came to town, came to Grand Forks. And it just made for an awesome environment. Awesome venue.”
