ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — If you thought to yourself ‘here we go again’ watching Fairfield men’s basketball go scoreless for the first seven minutes of its Friday night quarterfinal clash with a Saint Peter’s team that beat it twice in the regular season, no one would blame you.
Such a thought, however, would fail to account for Brandon Benjamin.
The first-year forward and newly minted All-MAAC Second Teamer scored 14 of the Stags’ first 16 points to drag them back into the game, and finished with 26 points and 15 rebounds as seventh seeded Fairfield claimed a thrilling 74-55 upset win over the second seeded Peacocks to advance to the MAAC Championships Semifinals.
“I really don’t think, I just go out there and have fun,” Benjamin said. “I just remember what I learned from my past and what I’m learning as of right now… I just needed to see the ball go in once, and then once I hit my first free throw, I was just like, okay, now everything is starting to come together.”
The Peacocks enforced their will on the game immediately from the opening tip, relying on their trademark physicality, full court pressure and diverse halfcourt defenses to stifle the Stags and open up an 11-0 advantage.
But after Benjamin got his team on the board with his first free throw, the Stags would score on their next seven possessions, the rookie phenom accounting for six of them. The extended run was punctuated by a corner three from Benjamin to knot the game at 16, just his second make from deep on the year.
And the fun didn’t stop there. Not long after, Benjamin threw down a massive dunk in transition off an alley-oop from first-year guard Nasir Rodriguez that lit up the Boardwalk Hall crowd and led to an eight point advantage for Fairfield, its largest of the half.
An ever resilient Saint Peter’s didn’t go away, however, causing chaos for the Stags’ offense in the final minutes of a wild first half to head to the locker room in a 30-30 tie.
“I thought we were playing really hard,” head coach Chris Casey said of the first half. “So I tend to lean on the positive, and I went into the locker room and said, ‘hey fellas, shake off that last minute, we’re doing a lot of really good things’, and I pointed a few of them out.”
Between Benjamin’s individual effort and that positive reinforcement, the Stags came out of the break on fire with a 10-0 run. After weathering the 8-2 counterpunch from the Peacocks, everything started to click in the middle of the half, and the Stags’ lead grew larger and larger until the game was well out of reach.
As was the case in Thursday night’s win over Manhattan, the Stags ended up with huge contributions up and down the roster. Benjamin’s frontcourt partner Declan Wucherpfennig added his own double double to the mix with 13 points and 15 rebounds. First-year guard Tony Williams matched his career-high with 16 points on a number of big shots, and guards Braden Sparks and Eric Mejia contributed nine and seven points, respectively.
“It’s just the passion, the belief, and we constantly talk about being a player-coached team,” Casey said of his team’s energy. “You don’t need me. You guys know what to do. And to listen to them in the huddles, basically coach themselves a lot, that was what I really enjoyed.”
Coming into the game, Casey emphasized the need for rebounding, limiting turnovers and preventing the Peacocks offense from getting out in transition.
His team responded by going plus-nine in rebounds, plus-two in the turnover margin, and holding Saint Peter’s to just 12 fast break points.
“I think it shows an understanding of what’s important and what you need to do to win,” Casey said. “When you look at the numbers, we won points off turnovers, we won points in the paint, we won second chance points, we won fast break points. Credit to our guys, they really paid attention to the last two times that we played Saint Peter’s… and they know what beat them.”
It’s the sign of a team that has consistently improved and is playing its best basketball at the right time. The win moves the Stags to a record of 13-6 since the start of January, including winning five of their last six.
With that momentum on their side, they have no reservations about what they expect to accomplish in the coming days.
“We knew we were gonna win [tonight],” Benjamin said. “We plan on staying here all six days. We knew exactly what we had to do, and we’re making sure we’re doing it right now. We’re making history.”
The Stags will try to make more history when they return to action for the semifinals on Sunday night. Tip-off against the winner of Saturday’s quarterfinal between Siena and Mount St. Mary’s is set for 8:30 p.m.
