Another double-double for senior forward Stephanie Geehan and another win for the women’s basketball team.

The women’s basketball team rebounded from their first loss of the season with a 68-54 win over Mount St. Mary’s as Geehan scored 16 points and grabbed 15 rebounds and improved to 4-1.

The game was Geehan’s third double-double this season and also led her to be named the MAAC Player of the Week for the second time this season. In the Stags’ loss to George Mason earlier in the week, she scored 33 points and added 17 rebounds. She is averaging 16.6 points per game and 12 rebounds per game, both the best on the team.

Her rebounding numbers are the best in the MAAC and eighth in the country. Defensively, she is averaging 2.8 blocks per game, 10th in the nation. She also leads the country in free throw percentage, having made all 15 of her attempts from the line this year.

Besides Geehan, the Stags got major contributions from junior forward Joelle Nawrocki, making her first career start in place of injured sophomore guard Sarah Paulus, and sophomore forward Tayrn Johnson.

“I told the team in the locker room how proud I was,” said head coach Joe Frager. “We had to play with a big lineup, shuffling it around. For Jo to step up was really important. It was asking a lot, she had 48 hours to get ready.”

Nawrocki finished with a career-high 15 points on six of nine shooting and played nearly the full 40 minutes. Johnson came off the bench to add 13 points and eight rebounds in 26 minutes.

“I thought TJ played a huge game today,” said Frager. “Some of our players, you can only put a few sheets of paper under their feet on their vertical jump, but Taryn is extremely athletic.”

The Stags were without Paulus, who injured her middle leg five minutes into Fairfield’s loss to George Mason. Frager was unsure how long she would be out, but noted that she was going for more tests. Nawrocki took her place on short notice and the Stags went with a bigger lineup. But they were dealt another blow when Geehan picked up her second foul in the first quarter and was limited to eight minutes in the first half.

“That’s not fun, but to our credit, we had girls play extremely well and were only down two at the half,” said Frager. “At halftime I told them, it’s 2-0 right now. And we went after the ball a lot harder in the second half.”

A theme for this year’s team has been to spread the scoring load and Fairfield had four girls score in double-digits, with sophomore guard Desiree Pina adding 10 points along with Geehan, Nawrocki and Pina. Frager admitted that in certain situations the Stags will look to certain players, such as Geehan or Pina, but they’ll be successful if they can get four players in double-digits every game.

Despite losing four seniors last season, including three starters and their first player off the bench, Fairfield has emphasized team play and it has worked early this season. The Stags are getting contributions from different players every night and continue to grow. As in seasons past, Frager wants the team to peak at the right time, during the stretch run at the end of the season.

“They’re incredibly coachable; they genuinely like to be around each other and they’re fun to be around,” said Frager. “This was my 67th game at Fairfield and I haven’t been any prouder.”