Heading into an important weekend in the MAAC and coming off of a loss to Vermont in the Bracket Buster game, Head Coach Ed Cooley realizes that the pressure is on. With just two games to go, games against Iona and Niagara will play a major role in determining where Fairfield will be seeded in the upcoming MAAC tournament. I sat down with Cooley on Tuesday to talk about the Vermont game and what comes next.
Do you think there are any positives you can take away from the weekend?
Cooley: [Freshman guard Colin] Nickerson was a big positive, but he’s been on a steady incline in these last five games. They didn’t get our B-game, and I give them credit. They played well and we didn’t play well. There are not a lot of positives things I can take from that. Not much at all … Not much at all when you’re two leading scorers go 9-for-29. Derek [Needham] played like a freshman. One of the few times this year he did. You just have to give credit to Vermont they did a good job. Not many positives to take out of that one.
How important is the upcoming weekend?
Cooley: Obviously Friday is our first opponent [Iona], and from the looks of it winner takes second place. That is really important because: a) it gives you a great chance to get you to Monday night with the bigger picture of the MAAC Championship even though you have a ton of work to do before that. You’re playing at home. Our whole philosophy the whole year is that we don’t want to repeat a loss. Iona beat us once. We’re coming off of a loss and we’re playing at home. The way we’ve played this year, fortunately, we’ve shown that we can bounce back from a loss. We haven’t loss two games in a row [all season]. We’d love to keep that streak alive. That’s what we have been talking to our guys a lot about.
What adjustments have you made since the loss to Iona on Jan. 24 in New Rochelle?
Cooley: They made 21 baskets and eleven of them were threes. Our biggest thing is that we want to limit some of their three-point shooting and we have to rebound the ball. If we do those things and execute on offense … their press hurt us a little bit the first time we played them we have to do a better job against their pressure. And, again, we’re hoping to get some excitement from our fans given the fact that we’ve played well at home all year with the exception of a couple of bumps in the road. I think we’ve scored the ball at home… I think we’re averaging close to 75, 77 points at home. There’s a comfort level there for us. It’s a senior ceremony so we’re trying to play that into Friday night, and the fact that they beat us already. Our goal is not to get swept and we’ve done that by Siena. So if we could avoid a sweep, that plays into it as well.
What do you think about Niagara’s late season surge?
Cooley: They’re playing as good as anybody right now. With the short preparation for both of us – they play at Manhattan, Friday night. Again, [it’s a] home game. It’s the last home game that Anthony [Johnson], Michael [Evanovich], and Jimmy [O’Sullivan] will play. We hope that plays into it. We need to be healthy. They beat us at their place, again the three-ball beat us at their place and turnovers. The games are almost mere images of each other and that is going to help us. They have very, very good guards and they’re a senior-laden team. Our thing is to win our home games. It has been our focus all year. We have two losses at home that we felt that we had a chance to win. If we keep with our toughness, there is no reason that we can’t be successful this weekend.
How do you think this weekend will prepare you for the MAAC tournament?
Cooley: Well I think it was a tournament feel that we just left at Vermont, and I’d really say that was the worst we’ve played in a long time. Just over all the way we played. And we’ve had losses, but I think that loss was a lot different than our other losses we’ve had all year. It was a game that we felt we got close, but then they made some three’s. The last second threes killed us in that game. It’s a loss, but we haven’t lost like that in a while. I think in itself that will prepare us for Friday and then for Sunday.
What do you think of the possibility of being the second-seed in the MAAC tournament?
Cooley: I think it’s huge. I think it’s big for a couple of reasons. It shows how far our program could come and is coming. We’ve showed progress every year. The fact that you want to win the last couple of games for your seniors. The two-seed helps your recruit … it says something about your program. It’s a personal thing. If we’re able to sweep, it would give us 20 wins for the first time (since 1995-1996). That’s 15 years and probably only the fourth time in school history. You’ve got some good things you can add to that with recruiting, especially with a very good team coming back, probably the best team we’ve had coming back since I’ve been here. What people don’t understand, what our players have done in the last two years. We’ve had to adjust. Everybody picked us fourth thinking we had Greg Nero, Warren Edney, and Yorel Hawkins. We don’t have any of them. Then you get Yorel with his appendix, he’s out for games, and then he cracks his knee up. Then we lose Lyndon [Jordan]. We don’t have Nero and Edney to begin with it. Hell, I’d like to coach that team. I could sit in the seat and let them just play. Pretty talented, right? So we’ve had to adjust in back-to-back seasons at the midway point, which is very difficult to do. I give our kids a ton of credit at what they’ve been able to do over the last two years not just to be competitive, but to win games.
What about reaching the 20-win plateau?
Cooley: I look at it for our staff. You see it. You see our players. You see how we work behind the scenes. We try to make it a community-type thing, more than just Ed Cooley’s team. It’s our team, it’s the school’s team. We try to embrace everyone. It will be more special for the Bill Lucas’ and the Gene Doris’ and the Fr. von Arx and Jack (Jones). They’ve seen the program at its worst, and I’m trying to get us to where we become our best. And that’s from a whole family, community and I’ve preached that since I’ve been here.
On the MAAC Tournament
Cooley: We want to replace it with a 2010 trophy. It’s a good foreshadowing for what we want to do for the next two or three years, especially next year in our building which is really special. But to get to next year you have to get through this year, and play Siena on their own home court and their environment. Face it, they’ve had our number the last five or six times we’ve played them. I think we’re getting closer and closer. I’d love to face them for the third time and see what we can do.
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