In a season that has been anything but predictable, the men’s basketball team heads into this weekend’s wide-open MAAC Tournament with its highest seed since the 1995-1996 season.
According to head coach Tim O’Toole, the No. 2 seeded Stags will need to continue their defensive prowess this weekend that ranked Fairfield near the top of the MAAC in each defensive category during the regular season.
“We need to play defense and take care of the ball,” O’Toole said. “I think if we do those things, we’ll have as good a chance as anybody in the league, if not better. But we got to go out and prove that.”
Fairfield opened its league schedule by reeling off seven straight wins to start the season, but stumbled to just a 6-5 record the rest of the way.
“We took the foot off the pedal, and that’s something you can’t do in this league,” guard Kudjo Sogadzi, ’05, said. “There were games like the Rider game and a couple other games at home that we definitely shouldn’t have lost, and that hurt our record.”
The Stags, however, regrouped to win four out of their last six regular season games to ensure the second place finish and an opening round bye in the conference tournament in Trenton, N.J.
Fairfield’s first game is slated for March 8 against the St. Peter’s/Rider winner. The Stags swept St. Peter’s in the teams’ two encounters, but struggled to just a 73-71 win in the second meeting.
Rider gained a split with the Stags by winning 58-56 in Fairfield’s last home game on President’s Day during the blizzard that hit the northeast.
“Both of those games we didn’t play like we should,” Sogadzi said. “We should have won easily … we’re not going to have that happen again.”
The Stags finished the regular season 17-10 overall and 13-5 in the MAAC. The 13 conference wins was tied for the most in school history. Fairfield went 13-1 in the ’85-86 season.
Fairfield also had a successful non-conference season, going 4-5 against some of the nation’s more formidable teams.
The vigorous out-of-conference schedule helped the Stags maintain an R.P.I. rating amongst the nation’s top 100 schools this year.
A challenging non-conference schedule is nothing new to the Stags, but equating those setbacks into a successful MAAC season is something the team hasn’t been able to do in the past.
“Part of what we did was schedule up and get our heads beat in by some big named schools,” O’Toole said. “We’ve finally been able to translate that into wins come our conference schedule.”
Fairfield played the likes of Duke, DePaul, St. John’s and UNC-Wilmington this year during its non-conference schedule that began the year.
Fairfield has been led by first team All-MAAC selection, Deng Gai, ’05.
The 6-foot-9 center was the lone Stag honored on this year’s All-MAAC team and just the third Stag to be named to the All-MAAC first team in ten years, after being recognized as the league’s top defender last season.
Gai continued his defensive dominance by blocking a conference-high 84 shots this year in just 21 games while averaging 12.8 points per game.
Gai’s average of four blocked shots per game ranks fourth in the nation.
Forward Oscar Garcia, ’03, finished the regular season tied with Gai by also averaging 12.8 points per game, while also leading the team with an impressive .807 free throw percentage.
O’Toole said he was surprised to see that Garcia was not recognized by the MAAC’s season-ending awards.
O’Toole also felt the contributions of freshman guard Terrence Todd and forward Dewitt Maxwell were deserving of All-Rookie recognition by the league.
Todd ranked second on the team with 86 steals and was fourth in scoring, averaging 8.3 points per game.
Maxwell’s presence was felt under the boards, averaging more than four rebounds a game, often coming out of nowhere to grab a rebound and put it up for a basket.
The biggest factor to the Stags success has been the dispersed contributions from its deep lineup, something Fairfield will need to do this weekend, according to Sogadzi.
“There are a lot of tough teams,” Sogadzi said. “The team that plays together and plays the hardest is going to pull it out.”
Leave a Reply