The Fairfield University women’s basketball team has been unstoppable this season, with a 10-1 record at home and 20-6 overall. The Stags proved once again to be Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference champions as they faced off against Monmouth University and Manhattan College this past week.
The team dominated both games, securing wins against both the University of Hartford Hawks and the Manhattan College Jaspers. The team began the tear with a 75-52 win over Monmouth on Thursday, February 24 at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Conn. The win boosted Fairfield’s conference record to 16-1, the best in program history. Three Stags scored in double figures. Guard Sydney Lowery, graduate student, secured a strong 18 points, followed by forward Lou Lopez-Senechal ‘22, with 16 points and guard Sam Lewis, graduate student, came up strong with 11 points and three three-pointers.
The women then headed to the Bronx, N.Y. to move past Manhattan 75-63. Lopez-Senechal and guard Rachel Hakes ‘22 both set season-highs. Lopez-Senechal dropped a career-high 30 points for their tenth straight win, tied for the third-longest win-streak in program history. Hakes collected a solid sixteen points for the evening. Fairfield shot 53 percent from the floor, marking the twentieth win of the season for the team.
Head coach of the women’s basketball team Joe Frager entered his fifteenth season with the Stags, taking pride in his student-athletes’ performance on and off the court. He has consistently worked with the team to produce a regular contender in the MAAC playoffs. Frager has 240 wins with the program and a .566 winning percentage overall.
Frager was thrilled with both performances and is immensely proud of the team’s progression over the season. Frager says, “We are very proud. As a coach, all you can ask is that people do the best that they can and try to focus on what the coaching staff is asking them to do, and they have really done that.”
Coach Frager continued, “We set a goal very early on that our first goal was to win a MAAC regular season championship, and we were able to accomplish that on Thursday. We are extremely proud of them and we are just trying to emphasize to them that there is more that we would like to achieve this season.”
He is also confident in the team and the seniors’ ability to carry the team to greatness. Frager admits, “This group’s experience, we’ve got a lot of great senior leadership there, so we have confidence that they will do that.”
Coach concludes that the main goal for the next few games of the season is trying to get better and sharper between now and Atlantic City, N.J., where the MAAC championship is held. He explains, “Just because we’ve won the regular season outright, we want to finish this regular season off in a good fashion, so we are just trying to get geared up for the next game.”
The women’s basketball team hosts Rider University on Senior Night which is slated to be on Thursday, March 3 at 5:00 p.m. The game will be streaming live on ESPN and ESPN+.
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