The screams howled in the distance, echoing louder and louder with every passing second. Head coach Ed Cooley bypassed the locker room and went straight to the team bus. Jon Han, the team’s senior captain and point guard, gave his input in a very public, vocal manner and then disappeared into the night.
‘We have a lot of demons we have to get out right now,’ junior forward Greg Nero said moments later, the only player with the fortitude to speak amidst the backstage sideshow.
Demons, at the time, seemed like an understatement.
Ten days later, the Stags emerged from an emotional roller coaster of a week the winners of two straight games, the first over Marist, which led by 17 points at half, and the second over Loyola (Md.), previous winners of six straight and the same team that prematurely ended the Stags’ season in each of the past two seasons.
The emergence of sophomore point guard Lyndon Jordan helped, as did the rise of Yorel Hawkins as a consistent scoring threat and Herbie Allen as a stable senior presence on and off the court.
But you don’t have to look much further than the man that stood up in the team’s darkest moments to explain the turnaround.
Nero was a veritable man on a mission this weekend. Despite being forced to start both games on the bench because of a balky back, Nero managed to total double-digit efforts in scoring and rebounding in both games.
In just a shade over 30 minutes of play on Sunday, Nero abused Loyola (Md.) forward Isaac Reid, totaling 19 points and 11 rebounds.
That came just 48 hours after Nero’s 15-point effort against Marist – 13 of which came in Fairfield’s 17-point second-half comeback.
‘Another big leadership game,’ Cooley said.
Arguably the most amazing part of the story is that Nero’s doing all of this hurt, far more hurt than anyone even realizes.
‘We’ve been like the walking wounded here these past couple of weeks,’ Cooley said.
Against Manhattan, Cooley had pledged to give Nero the night off to rest his back. With the Stags struggling, though, Cooley looked down his bench and, in desperation, did something he tried to avoid the entire night.
‘Coach came to me, and I told him I’d go in,’ Nero said. ‘I knew what I had to do, knew that the team needed me. But, to be honest, I didn’t really feel like playing.’
But he did.
Nero’s presence in the second half sparked a late comeback that nearly ended in his team stealing a road victory.
Despite the team’s most recent wins, the battle remains as uphill as ever. The Stags lost an All-MAAC four-year starting point guard, a dominant center, and ‘one of the best athletes in the MAAC,’ according to Cooley, in the span of 24 hours, and’ still await a pair of games against Niagara and another showdown against Rider.
All they’ve done since those 24 hours is take two must-win games, and all Greg Nero has done in those two games is assert himself as more than just the emotional leader; he’s become the symbol of the Stags’ heart: bloodied and beaten, but still beating.
When Anthony Johnson and Warren Edney fell to season-ending injuries and Jon Han stumbled into finger-pointing, Nero stood tall.
Ten days later, his teammates are shoulder-to-shoulder.
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