Positive Progress

After the first month of play in 2009, it looked like the women’s basketball team was headed for a disappointing finish. The Stags were hovering around .500 and had suffered a blowout loss to Iona. But, six straight wins by the Stags have thrust the team into second place in the MAAC, one and a half games behind Marist. Fairfield is now 14-8 overall and 9-2 in the conference.

‘As a coach you always try to stay as positive as you can, but in reality, you do at times, question. You say; will we be able to turn this around?’ said head coach Joe Frager. ‘We were a very inconsistent team in the first eight to 10 games of the season.

‘But to their credit, they started to pick up what we wanted to do better and I think our focus became better as the year went on,’ he added.

Fairfield’s most recent wins came against Siena on Thursday night at Alumni Hall and on the road in Baltimore against Loyola on Sunday.

Senior Lauren Groom scored a game-high 21 points against Siena in the 73-47 win.
‘To have Lauren Groom step up the way she did today, she was unconscious in the first half with the ball,’ said Frager. ‘She’s been much more aggressive shooting the ball in the past few games. That’s exactly what the team needs.’

Groom hit nine of her 12 shots, including two of three from beyond the arc.

‘Coach Frager always says that we like to play our best basketball in the last third of the season,’ said Groom. ‘I think that we are way ahead of where we were in the beginning of the season.’

The Stags won by a wide margin despite leading-scorer senior Baendu Lowenthal being held to six points. But Fairfield has seven players score six or more points and plenty of contributions from its bench.

‘I really thought that Taryn Johnson gave us a nice spark off the bench,’ said Frager. ‘She had 10 rebounds in 18 minutes.’

Johnson was one of three freshmen to receive significant playing time, along with Sarah Paulus and Desiree Pina.

Pina scored 13 points in the win over the Saints and hit three three-point shots.

‘It’s very important (for other players to step up),’ said Lowenthal. ‘Especially when you’ve got those guys shooting the outside jump shot, it makes things a lot easier for me and I thank them for that.’

Paulus has also received significant time as a backup behind senior guard Megan Caskin.

‘I think (the freshmen have improved by) leaps and bounds,’ said Frager. ‘No matter how good you are coming out of high school, it’s a huge adjustment to the college game.’
In the win against Loyola, Fairfield started slowly and went into halftime ahead by only two points. But the Stags held the Greyhounds to only 17 points in the second half for the 60-41 win.

‘I thought that the first half wasn’t our best,’ said Frager. ‘When we’ve been playing well, we’ve been taking good care of the basketball. We had an uncharacteristic number of turnovers in the first half.’

But Frager was pleased with the effort and response of the Stags in the second half of the game.

‘Where in the beginning part of the year, we were all over the place,’ said Frager. ‘Sometimes we would be that team, sometimes we wouldn’t. We would change within the flow of the game. We just been much more consistent with how we prepare and then carrying that over into game and trying to do as much as we can come game time.’

Fairfield will travel on the road to face Rider on Friday and then return to Alumni Hall to face Niagara on Sunday.

‘Every game in the MAAC is important,’ said Groom. ‘It’s so competitive and you have to bring your ‘A’ game every time.’

After this weekend, the Stags will face MAAC-leading Marist, followed by third-place Canisius in two big home games.

Frager knows his team is playing good basketball right now and hopes it continues through the end of the year.

‘I’m really pleased with the progress that we’ve made. Now the question is: Can we sustain it? I think that obviously you want to be playing your best basketball toward the end of the season and we’re in that phase already.’