Standing tall

Fairfield Athletics

BRIDGEPORT – One night after Fairfield learned that it would be without three of its key players for an extended period of time, the Stags were able to find the perfect remedy: a victory.

Led by junior forwards Mike Evanovich (16 points) and Greg Nero (15 points), the Stags (13-9, 6-5 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference) bounced back from a three gaming losing streak for a 68-63 victory over Marist (7-16, 3-8) at the Arena at Harbor Yard.’ Fairfield shot over 60 percent in the second half to stoke the comeback.

‘This has been a very emotional week for all of us,’ Fairfield head coach Ed Cooley said. ‘With the rash of injuries, the team was facing adversity, having not played well, truly the proudest win I’ve ever had.’

Despite trailing by eight points at halftime, the Stags came out full of energy and were able to take over the lead with 10:49 left in the game, 50-48 on two free throws by Greg Nero.

Herbie Allen, the Stags senior point guard who was filling in for the suspended Jon Han, hit a jump shot with 5:46 remaining in the game to put Fairfield up 60-55 and never the Stags never looked back.

Fairfield also played without sophomore forward Warren Edney who is out for the season with a leg injury and junior forward Anthony Johnson, who remains in the hospital with lung problems.

Along with the injuries, the Stags second-leading scorer and first-team All-MAAC pre-season pick, Han, remains suspended from the team, and Cooley said that he will deal with the problem at a later time.

‘It will be day-to-day. Right now our number one focus is the guys in the locker room and Anthony’s health. I’ll see him after we are done here and put a smile on his face,’ Cooley said. ‘We’ll reevaluate [Jon’s situation]. Right now I’m only worried about those guys in the locker room and the one in the hospital.’

Evanovich said that the team fed off of the emotion to lead them to a much needed victory.

‘Peanut said he didn’t want us to play for him before the game, but there is no way you are not going to play for somebody in that situation,’ said Evanovich. ‘We went out there and said we were doing this for Peanut.’

In the first half the Stags allowed Marist to jump out to a 16 point lead at 26-10 with 10:16 left in the half. Fairfield struggled on both offense and defense, allowing Ryan Schneider to score nine points and were unable to find an answer on the other end.

But a 10-2 run brought the Stags within eight points with 2:21 left in the first half and then went into the break trailing 35-27. Yorel Hawkins, who dunked the ball with under five seconds left in the half to swing momentum to the Stags and Evanovich each scored six points in the half, but as a team the Stags shot just 36.7 percent and turned the ball over seven times. Hawkins would finish with 14 points.

Now the Stags head into another key game against Loyola on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Arena at Harbor Yard.

‘You have to keep it in perspective,’ said Cooley. ‘You don’t want to wear off our emotion. I think today was an adrenaline and emotion game. We have to stick to the basics of what has to hold us together.’

‘

Video of the Stags post-game press conference:

‘

‘lt;object width=’425′ height=’344”gt;’lt;param name=’movie’ value=’http://www.youtube.com/v/xFDc1Tpgg34’amp;hl=en’amp;fs=1”gt;’lt;/param’gt;’lt;param name=’allowFullScreen’ value=’true”gt;’lt;/param’gt;’lt;param name=’allowscriptaccess’ value=’always”gt;’lt;/param’gt;’lt;embed src=’http://www.youtube.com/v/xFDc1Tpgg34’amp;hl=en’amp;fs=1′ type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ allowscriptaccess=’always’ allowfullscreen=’true’ width=’425′ height=’344”gt;’lt;/embed’gt;’lt;/object’gt;