College basketball fans love plucky underdogs and mid-major programs capable of competing with the big boys, and the next great mid-major to watch is the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks. For the moment, cheap SFA basketball tickets are still widely available, but those days are soon coming to an end. The Lumberjacks have become the pre-eminent program in the Southland Conference, and have won a few games over power-conference teams, putting the program on the map and increasing the demand for last-minute SFA basketball tickets.

Getting Started

Danny Kaspar is the head coach who got the Lumberjacks moving in the right direction. He took over the program in 2000 and slowly built the SFA program until the Lumberjacks won their first regular-season conference championship in 2008, earning them a spot in the NIT for just the second time in program history. A year later, Stephen F. Austin won both the regular-season and tournament titles in the Southland, sending the Lumberjacks to the NCAA Tournament for the first time.

The Next Step

When Kaspar left following the 2012-13 season, Brad Underwood took over as head coach and quickly took SFA to new heights. While a lot of wins were later vacated, Underwood led Stephan F. Austin to Southland regular-season and tournament championships in all three of his seasons with the Lumberjacks. That meant three straight NCAA Tournament appearances from 2014 to 2016, a stretch that included upsets over VCU in 2014 and West Virginia in 2016, giving SFA the reputation of a giant killer.

Onward and Upward

Naturally, Underwood left for a better job after three great seasons at SFA, passing the torch to head coach Kyle Keller, who maintained the program’s success. Under Keller, the Lumberjacks returned to the NCAA Tournament in 2018 and were poised to play in the Big Dance again in 2020 before the tournament was canceled. The 2019-20 season was the best in school history, as the Lumberjacks were 28-3, highlighted by a monumental upset of no. 1 Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium, leaving no doubt that Stephen F. Austin is a mid-major program that’s here to stay.