KANSAS CITY, Mo. (July 28, 2021) – For the second consecutive year, the Northern Arizona men's basketball team earned the Team Academic Excellence Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC). The Lumberjacks as a team recorded a 3.56 grade point average for the 2020-21 academic year, easily surpassing the minimum requirement of 3.0 for the award.
The NABC Team Academic Excellence Award was established during the 2012-13 season, marking the ninth year that the NABC recognizes outstanding academic achievement by teams who hold a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or better for the season.
After not earning the award during the first seven years since it was established, the Lumberjacks under head coach
Shane Burcar have done so in each of the last two years. The 3.56 team GPA this year was the sixth-best among NAU programs in an outstanding year by the athletic department, and was a huge increase from the 3.13 team GPA of a season ago.
NAU was one of four Big Sky teams, along with Eastern Washington, Montana and Weber State, to be recognized with the Team Academic Excellence Award.
Additionally,
Davy Cummard,
Keith Haymon and
Nik Mains were recognized on the NABC Honors Court. In order to be named to the Honors Court, a student-athlete must be a junior or senior academically, hold a cumulative grade point average of 3.2 or higher and spent at least one year at their current institution.
Cummard (finance) and Haymon (business economics) both finished their undergraduate degrees in the spring, while Mains (information systems) completed his degree in the summer.
Cummard and Mains both were recognized on the NABC Honors Court last year, and Haymon is a first-time honoree. Also of note, new Lumberjack
Justus Rainwater was an Honors Court awardee for the second consecutive year at Florida Gulf Coast.
NAU was one of six Big Sky institutions with a member on the Honors Court.
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