“We looked at each other, and we were like, yeah, this is it.”
It was that moment, in April 2022, when Carly Thibault-DuDonis and her husband Blake decided to make the jump. After four seasons on Hall of Fame coach Lindsey Whalen’s staff at Minnesota, and numerous declined offers from other schools, Thibault-DuDonis chose Fairfield to begin her head coaching career.
“It felt really bright,” she said of the Fairfield opening. “There were some head coaching positions I had turned down previously that just didn’t feel like the best fit or that the timing was right, but this one felt right for a lot of reasons.”
There would be big shoes to fill, with longtime coach Joe Frager retiring after a conference championship win and an NCAA Tournament trip the season prior.
Unbeknownst to Stag country, a replication of that success would be just the beginning.
—
Pregame
Laughs and music echo through the lower interior hallways of the Schottenstein Center. Fairfield women’s basketball, the No. 11 seed in the Fort Worth 1 regional of the 2026 NCAA Tournament, is just under an hour away from tip-off against No. 6 seed Notre Dame.
As the Stags begin their warm-up and stretching routines, there is a palpable confidence and joy noticeable to anyone who walks through the nearby tunnel.
“I think this year there was definitely a confident energy in that we have so many returners who have played on that stage in the past one, two or for some even three years,” said graduate road runner Lauren Beach. “I think we all really trusted and believed in our capability and the way we were prepared by our coaches.”
Added to that is a determination to rise above the shortcomings of the previous two seasons. Despite so much history achieved in an extended run with a top five winning percentage in the entire sport, the Stags had taken convincing losses to Indiana and Kansas State in their last two trips to March Madness.
This time would be different.
—
Year one wasn’t always easy.
Challenged with the loss of a wealth of veteran talent from the inherited conference title team, including future WNBA draft pick Lou Lopez Senechal who transferred to Connecticut, Thibault-DuDonis and her staff coached the Stags to a 15-15 record in her first season at the helm.
“We didn’t achieve the success on the court that we wanted, but I thought that year was instrumental in building what is now our culture and our foundation that we’ve built upon since then,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “We were able to not only on the court teach the ball movement and the spacing and the selfless style in which we play now, but off the court we really dug into all of our values.”
The season came to a close in a 59-53 MAAC Quarterfinal loss to Siena. But with key contributors like Beach and guard Janelle Brown set to return, plus the arrival of Thibault-DuDonis’s first recruiting class, the potential for improvement was clear.
And even the most optimistic of fans probably couldn’t predict what happened next.
The Stags exploded in Thibault-DuDonis’s second year, posting a program best 31-2 record, earning a first ever national ranking in the AP Top 25 and returning to the MAAC throne for a trip to the NCAA Tournament.
From the outside looking in, it was an unprecedented leap. But for Thibault-DuDonis and her staff, the signs were there early.
“That summer, we were running some bad offense in workouts and in practice, and we were still scoring, which is not an experience we had before,” she said.
That increased efficiency carried over into the start of the season, when the Stags scored 89 points in a blowout win over Lipscomb. They followed it up with a down-to-the-wire 73-70 loss to SEC foe Vanderbilt, who would go on to make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team that year.
“At Vanderbilt when we lost by three, we were obviously disappointed as coaches, and you don’t know what you’re walking into in the locker room,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “Are [the players] happy that it was a close game? Where are they at? And we walked into the locker room and they were mad, they knew they could win that game.”
It was a performance and a response that, both on the court and off, proved one thing. On the biggest stages, the Stags believed they belonged.
—
00:00, First Quarter
The Stags are proving they belong.
After the first 10 minutes of play against Notre Dame, they trail by a margin of 17-12. Their offense, which led the entire country in made threes per game, has just one make on six tries from deep and is shooting a mere 38% from the field, but the game is still well within reach.
It’s a testament to how far the team has come. Their defense, much improved from even earlier that year, when five of their first eight opponents scored over 70. Their versatility, more comfortable working the ball into the paint when outside shots aren’t falling.
And most importantly, their fight, answering a quick 6-0 run from Notre Dame with a basket at the end of the quarter to take some positive momentum into the second. Fight that was forged through moments of adversity long ago.
30 more minutes.
—
Just about everything that could go wrong, did.
The Stags, unbeaten in the MAAC, ranked 25th in the country and on a 28-game winning streak coming in, entered the locker room at halftime of the 2024 MAAC Championship trailing by 11.
Their opponent, the Niagara Purple Eagles, had turned them over 16 times in the first 20 minutes. The Stags managed just 22 first half points.
“I remember walking into the locker room at halftime of that game and just saying, they are doing their identity better than we are,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “I told them, you’re a damn good team, and it’s time to start playing like one.”
And as they’ve done so many times since, the Stags rose to the challenge.
Despite continuing to trail until the final two minutes of regulation, despite committing a turnover with a chance to win the game at the buzzer and despite being forced to play overtime without the Conference Player of the Year in Brown, who fouled out at the end of the fourth quarter, the Stags showed their championship mettle.
A 12-4 domination of the extra period sent the Purple Eagles home and earned the Stags the first of a soon to be three-straight MAAC titles.
It was the coronation of a conference dynasty, and the crowning achievement of a team that never stops fighting.
—
04:13, Second Quarter
The Stags are in the danger zone.
They trail the Fighting Irish 29-17 after a slow start to the second frame, at risk of taking a knockout punch from their opponents in the remaining minutes before halftime. But it won’t be that easy.
Conference Player of the Year Kaety L’Amoreaux scores a layup and a three on back-to-back possessions. Her fellow All-MAAC First Teamer Meghan Andersen forces a steal on the next defensive set, and when the Fighting Irish answer with a three, she responds right back with her own layup.
Timeout Notre Dame. They still trail by eight, but momentum is back with the Stags. It’s all right there for the taking.
21 more minutes.
—
April 2022 was when the work, and the dream, began. But June 2023 is maybe when it started to become a reality.
That’s the month that Kaety L’Amoreaux and Meghan Andersen, the headliners of Carly Thibault-DuDonis’s first recruiting class at Fairfield, stepped on campus. The success was immediate, and unprecedented.
Rookie of the Year and All-MAAC First Team honors for Andersen, who became a fixture on national award watchlists. All-Rookie Team and All-Tournament Team honors for L’Amoreaux, who proved right away she could perform her best on the biggest stages.
The accolades and accomplishments have only grown in the years since. Andersen is now a three-time All-MAAC First Teamer, and this season set the program single game scoring record with a 40-point performance against Marist.
L’Amoreaux has climbed from All-Rookie Team as a freshman, to All-MAAC Second Team as a sophomore, to All-MAAC First Team and Conference Player of the Year as a junior and recorded the program’s first ever triple-double in a January win over Niagara.
“They’re leaving a legacy unlike anything that we’ve seen,” Thibault-DuDonis said of the duo. “They have a chance to win four championships in four years, and honestly that’s what they set out to do when they committed to Fairfield, it’s something we talked about in the recruiting process.”
“They’ve had unbelievable careers, and they’re staying at Fairfield in a world where people jump ship quickly for a dollar amount, for bigger and better, and they’re so bought in to making the big time where we’re at.”
In the greatest stretch of success in program history, it’s been the greatest pairing in program history that has served as the catalyst. And with senior seasons approaching, they’ve shown no signs of slowing down.
—
04:55, Third Quarter
The Stags are in trouble.
It’s gotten away so quickly. What was a momentum swing and a jolt of optimism at the end of the second quarter turned into a disastrous last minute before halftime, surrendering two scores and a turnover that has bled over into the second half.
Now the Fighting Irish are asserting themselves. Three-time All-American Hannah Hidalgo is taking over the game with her defense, and the favorites are on an extended 15-4 run.
It’s the kind of decisive, separating stretch the Stags are so used to orchestrating themselves against their conference foes. But they have to keep fighting if they want to achieve their ultimate goal, a program-first NCAA Tournament win. They’ve overcome long odds in the past. They’ll just have to do it again.
15 more minutes.
—
Entering year three, the pressure and the expectations were immense. How could anyone live up to the kind of season the Stags were coming off of?
The adversity came quickly in the form of a 62-39 beatdown at the hands of Richmond in the Stags’ home opener, the same night they unveiled the previous year’s championship banner in the Mahoney Arena rafters.
It continued a month later when Brown, not just the reigning Conference Player of the Year but the preseason pick to do it again, tore her ACL and was lost for the season late in the second half against Villanova, who the Stags were already trailing.
But as they have time and time again, they picked each other up. The Stags overcame their emotions, erased the deficit to knock off the Wildcats and rattled off a 22-2 stretch through the rest of the season without one of their best players to go back-to-back in the MAAC.
“I’m most proud of the resilience that team had,” Beach said. “Obviously losing Nellie for the season meant we lost a huge part of our team, but so many people stepped up on an individual level to allow us to have the success we ended up having.”
Just one more example of how for every punch thrown their way, the Stags would throw one right back, determined to keep going.
—
05:02, Fourth Quarter
The Stags are running out of time.
The shots are finally starting to fall, but it’s too little too late. The quest to take a further step into history has reached a familiar summit still too insurmountable to climb.
Hidalgo has taken to the bench after a dominant performance, and a hush of inevitability has fallen over the Fairfield faithful in the crowd.
But out on the court, with the result all but solidified, the Stags continue to do the one thing they’ve made a guarantee every time they take the floor: they fight.
Keep shooting. Keep defending. Keep rebounding. Because Fairfield women’s basketball is closer than ever before to a milestone breakthrough. It’s just still not quite close enough.
Only five more minutes.
—
Year four was, in many ways, the most successful yet. Somehow, the Stags continued to one-up themselves, bolstered by an impressive run through a gauntlet non-conference schedule.
A second-straight win over Villanova. A split with the reigning AAC champs South Florida and nationally ranked North Carolina out in Las Vegas. A road shootout with top 10 fixture Iowa. Revenge against Richmond.
It all started to come together at a level not yet seen in the previous two championship runs. Even in the face of their biggest in-conference challenger of Thibault-DuDonis’s tenure in Quinnipiac, who claimed the conference tournament’s number one seed on a tiebreaker, the Stags reasserted their dominance with a 51-44 win for banner number three.
While the end result was more of the same, the quality of the product on the floor had come a long way from just three seasons prior.
“I think there were really only two veteran players that had experience playing bigger roles when Coach Carly arrived, and everyone else had to quickly step up into bigger roles than they had in the past,” Beach said. “Our program now has been super special in that every year there has been a solid group of returning veterans who continue to choose Fairfield during a time where it has become so common to enter the portal and search for other opportunities.”
The rest of the country was paying close attention. Best-ever metrics, a return to the AP Top 25 and a new highest seed of 11 in the NCAA Tournament were all a reward for the Stags’ most complete season yet.
All that was left was a maiden win in March Madness. The last two seasons didn’t end according to plan, but those teams were not the 2025-26 Fairfield Stags.
This time would be different.
—
Postgame
79-60. That’s the final score that hangs on the jumbotron over the shoulders of the Stags as they walk off the court, down the tunnel and into the locker room.
The same hallway that had been filled with joy and excitement just two hours earlier is now hollow with disappointment. It was their best chance yet, and their best effort to match, but still the Stags came up empty.
But in the locker room, it’s not long before the emotions of the game give way to something greater.
“It’s always emotional when your seniors graduate and are done, those guys have had unbelievable careers and they’ve left a mark unlike anyone else,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “So you really just sit in that locker room, and all the coaches and returners express their gratitude, but then you do look forward to, this is the legacy you’ve built and we’re gonna continue to carry it on for you.”
For Beach and Brown in particular, the only two players to be a part of every Thibault-DuDonis coached team, it was the end of an era that they’ll never forget.
“In the locker room after the game I don’t think we even talked much about the game itself, but instead we talked mainly about how much this team has meant to each of us,” Beach said. “It has been so cool to see all the connections and excitement that continues to build around women’s basketball here, and I truly don’t think there are many other places that value and support women’s basketball like Fairfield does.”
“We are leaving a legacy not just of success on the court, but of creating a special community where all are welcome.”
That afternoon, in the Schottenstein Center, the Stags ran out of time. But it won’t be long before the clock resets, and one of college basketball’s most successful programs in recent years gets to do it all over again.
—
In the days after the end of a college basketball season, returning players typically get some downtime to decompress and turn their attention away from basketball for the first time in months.
But for coaches like Thibault-DuDonis and her staff, the work is in many ways just beginning.
“We’re constantly reevaluating our team,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “We take a lot of feedback from our team as far as what went well, where can we get better, where do we really want to focus going forward, so we can keep tinkering and keep getting better year after year.”
For all the success of the last four years, the Stags still remain a step away from their biggest goal. So with the heartbreak of the Notre Dame loss still fresh, Carly Thibault-DuDonis returned to campus with scheduling, recruiting and the transfer portal top of mind.
Because what they don’t tell you about making history, is how quickly it fades away to become just that. And if you want to write more, there’s always more work to be done.
