Haskell's Terrance Little Thunder, right, shoots over Bacone's Andrew Hamilton, left, and Marvin Woods. Haskell won, 93-79, on Wednesday night at Coffin Complex.

It takes a special player to get the crowd and the team energized just by walking to the scorer’s table to check into the game.

That’s exactly what the Haskell Indian Nations University men’s basketball squad has in Terrance Little Thunder.

With HINU faltering late in its game against Bacone College on Wednesday night at Coffin Complex, the 6-foot-10 junior from Red Scaffold, S.D., brought a renewed sense of energy in the late stages of the Indians’ 93-79 victory.

“He’s not a big fire-it-up guy, and he doesn’t yell – he just leads by his actions,” HINU sophomore John Tarbell said of Little Thunder. “Everyone knows ‘Big Nation.’ You can’t miss a 6-9, 6-10 guy. When he gets in the game, he knows how to handle himself. When people see ‘Big Nation’ come in, they know we’re going big, and they know there’s a chance of more blocked shots.”

After Little Thunder was pulled because of foul trouble with 11 minutes remaining and the team up by 14 points, the Warriors took advantage and put together a 17-5 run to make it 73-71.

Haskell coach Ted Juneau turned to the player they refer to as ‘Big Nation’ to prevent the dam from completely bursting.

As soon as Little Thunder stood up, a roar came from the crowd.

Then, as he waited at the scorer’s table for the next dead ball, HINU’s Chad Kaler and Vince Chavez drained back-to-back three-pointers to end a 2-for-10 drought spanning the seven minutes Little Thunder was on the bench.

“My stepdad says, ‘You’ve got charisma,'” said Little Thunder, who had a team-high 25 points. “I was like, ‘All right, what’s that?’ I finally found out. It’s something the crowd realized and once our crowd got into it, it kind of fired us up too.”

The boost sent the Indians on a 16-2 run over the following three minutes, and HINU locked up the victory.

“A lot of kids hit big shots down the line, and ‘Big Nation’ scored inside, but he threw the ball outside, and we were getting some open looks and we were knocking them down,” Juneau said.