There was a question in everyone’s minds before the men’s basketball team even took the court this year: Will this be Tim O’Toole’s final season as the head coach of the program that in past years struggled to achieve mediocrity?
The athletic administration, along with the university, answered that question by affirming its confidence in O’Toole and offered the fifth-year head coach and former graduate of Fairfield a contract extension.
“At this point, I’m not looking for another coach,” said Director of Athletics Eugene Doris. “We’ve made the commitment that we want to go forward with him [O’Toole]. The question becomes does he want to go forward with us and what’s being offered?”
Terms of the extension have not been finalized, at this time nor has O’Toole accepted the offer.
“We wanted to focus and concentrate on this season and not worry about all the other distractions,” O’Toole said. “We are still tying up loose ends and trying to focus on finishing up recruiting. So we still have some more work to do before we figure out next year.”
Doris said he expected the team to win between 16 and 18 games this season, and related his evaluation of O’Toole to a student receiving a report card in school.
“We were obviously looking for results because you can measure a lot of things statistically, but if those statistics don’t equate into positive efforts, then we would need to look at why that’s not happening,” Doris said. “I’m not saying that if our expectations weren’t met … but it would have had to be pretty close to that.”
O’Toole, however, said he never felt the pressure to win this season in order to save his career at Fairfield.
“I feel people save lives, not careers,” O’Toole said. “Whether my coaching career was to come to a halt or whether it was to continue was really up to a higher power.”
The road wasn’t easy for O’Toole, as the Stags were immediately faced with adversity to start the year with the absence of Ajou Deng, Deng Gai and Jeremy Logan, who medically red-shirted and will return for a fifth year.
Ajou Deng sat out more than a month to start the season after off-season foot surgery that prohibited the 6-foot-11 graduate student from having the mobility he once possessed.
After sitting out the entire fall semester for violating university policy, Deng Gai once again made headlines with his comments following the MAAC Championship game about the possibility of transferring.
Doris, however, said it was a misunderstanding and after meeting with Gai, Doris said he believes Gai will return to Fairfield next year.
The Stags began the season 0-2 after losses to Harvard and St. John’s on the Stags’ home court, before winning one of the biggest games of the O’Toole era against Colonial Conference-power UNC-Wilmington in overtime at the Arena at Harbor Yard.
At the time, games against Iona and away to DePaul and Marist stared the Stags in the face and another mediocre season waited in the wings.
“I’m very proud of what this team accomplished. We knew from last year, that this group had something special by its chemistry, that was forged,” O’Toole said. “We’ve worked hard and we wanted to have a team that the university, especially the student body, would be proud of. We’ve been working five years to create this and I think we all witnessed some of the fruits of that labor.”
Fairfield gained recognition by making it to the MAAC Championship game, gaining national exposure on ESPN and further put its stamp as a mid-major force by hosting Boston College in the NIT last Tuesday – all positives in terms of recruiting better players.
There is a downside, however, to the Stags’ success this year, according to Doris.
“It makes scheduling more difficult because we become more dangerous. Until you become regularly good, people worry about scheduling you,” Doris said. “Until we start to put together some back-to-back [winning seasons], we become a dangerous game for people.”
According to Doris, Fairfield has a verbal agreement to play Duke next year, but nothing has been made official. The athletic administration is also pushing for games against Holy Cross and St. Joseph’s, each made the NCAA Tournament this year.
“A lot of people looked at playing Fairfield as a winnable game,” Doris said. “Now that we’ve established ourselves as not a winnable game, people become a little nervous.”
The Stags finished the season 19-12. The 19 wins was the fourth highest amount of wins in a year in the program’s history. The team hadn’t won more than 14 games in any of O’Toole’s previous four seasons as head coach.
O’Toole credits the Stags’ senior leadership of Deng, Nick Delfico and Oscar Garcia for much of the team’s success this year.
“This team had great resolve and a determination to fight back from adversity. I think all the players emerged at some time and did great things,” O’Toole said. ” I think that was the trademark of our team, that on any given night, a different player stepped up and make solid contributions. I was most proud of the seniors, for their leadership, which may go unnoticed was the biggest reason for our success.”
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