BALTIMORE – All of a sudden, things aren’t so bad at all for the Fairfield men’s basketball team.
That’s because after getting run out of the gym by Marist last Friday night, the Stags went into perhaps the most hostile environment in the MAAC – Loyola’s Reitz Arena – and beat the Greyhounds 80-72 Tuesday night, ending their marathon six-game road trip with a respectable 3-3 record.
“Playing six games on the road is real tough,” said Terrance Todd ’06, who lit up the Greyhounds for a career-high 35 points on 11-of-19 shooting. “We would have liked to win every game, but this is a really big win, especially going into the Manhattan game.”
On a night when the Stags (6-11, 4-5 MAAC) desperately needed a win, it was Todd who stepped up the most. He completed five three-point plays, all of them the old-fashioned way, and hit 13-of-14 free throw shots, out-shining Loyola’s Andre Collins, who came into the game with the second highest scoring average in the country.
“After watching Kobe [Bryant] score 81 Terrance decided he wanted 81,” DeWitt Maxwell ’06 joked after the game.
Maxwell wasn’t the only one smiling when all was said and done.
“It’s great,” said Herbie Allen ’09, who hit two big three-pointers down the stretch and finished with 15 points. “This place was a like Marist but a little louder. It was crazy.”
Unlike in years past, when Reitz was among the emptiest buildings in college basketball and the Greyhounds were the laughing stalk of the MAAC, winning in Baltimore is not easy. Minutes before the ball went in the air for the opening tip, Reitz turned into a mid-winter indoor party, with the students stomping on the bleachers and causing the floor to shake during timeouts. But that made the silence in the final minutes that much sweeter for the Stags.
“Loyola, man. It’s a tough place to play,” Maxwell said. I’ve never seen a place like that in my life. I think they had more fans [tonight] than they did my first three years combined.”
Maxwell, who had seven points and a team-high 10 rebounds, jump-started the play that may have put the dagger in the Greyhounds’ heart. With the Stags up by eight with just under five minutes to play, he stole a pass in the lane and hit a streaking Todd with a long outlet pass around mid-court. Todd laid the ball off the glass with his left hand and hit the shot as he was fouled. He finished the three-point play to put the Stags up 63-52.
At that point, the only thing in question was the final score. The students began to file out, the students in the local high school marching band that had fired up the crowd for most of the game packed up their instruments, and Loyola graduate Bob Novack prepared to leave his courtside seat and head back to Washington to get back to his new gig at Fox News.
All of them were disappointed, having lost at home for just the second time all year. The only people who weren’t disappointed were wearing red and white.
So off they went, back up I-95 for a five-hour bus trip that certainly went by a lot faster than it would have had they not taken care of business in the finale of their road trip. And for Head Coach Tim O’Toole, the next order of business was to hope for a solid turnout for the Stags’ homecoming Friday night against Manhattan.
“We’ve got to hope that the students will come and that they won’t get down on our record,” he said. “We’re coming together now that DeWitt’s back We’re a little bit closer to a whole team than we were earlier on. If we can just keep fighting through things we can make a run at this thing.”
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