Fairfield falls to Iona
All the momentum in this week was building up for this moment.
Four games in four days for the chance to earn the program’s first conference championship in over 20 years.
Fairfield had come from a 1-9 start all the way to the 2021 MAAC Tournament Championship game. The Stags were playing their best basketball of the year and would face Iona in a 2018 MAAC Championship rematch.
Except the game ended exactly how it did three years ago with Iona celebrating on center court, punching a ticket to the Big Dance instead of the Stags.
On Saturday, the seventh seeded Stags (10-17 overall, 8-12 MAAC) fell, 60-51, to the No. 9 seed Gaels (12-5, 7-3). Iona earned its fifth straight MAAC title along with an automatic ticket to the NCAA Tournament, leaving Fairfield at the end of its 2021 campaign.
“We were not a good team earlier in the year, obviously and most of that was my fault, but I never thought it was a personnel issue,” Fairfield head coach Jay Young said. “I thought it was an execution issue and we just had to get better. … I’m proud of where we ended up, certainly devastated for our guys but we’ll be back in this game if we keep doing what we’re doing.”
Iona took advantage of the Stags’ slow game tempo and limited their offense to their third worst shooting performance of the season. Fairfield ended the game shooting 30.2 percent, it’s lowest since its 68-51 loss to Niagara on Dec. 18. The Stags’ worst shooing game of the season came the last time they lost to Iona, on Dec. 11 with a 27.5 shooting percent performance.
“Our offense just didn’t show up tonight,” Young said. “It was a combination of a very good defensive team in Iona and when we did get some open shots, you gotta make them. You’re not going to win a type of game against this opponent scoring 51 points. … That had been a problem for us in the past and it kinda came back and bit us tonight.”
Fairfield’s shooting woes began in the first half where in the opening ten minutes, the Stags were just 2-of-13 from the floor. Five straight points from Benning cut a seven-point lead by Iona to a one-score game at 5:06 — the closest the Stags would get within the Gaels the whole game.
A 13-3 run, allowed Iona to close out the first half ahead, 30-18.
The Stags opened the second half with some momentum as they went on a 10-2 run to get within four points of Iona. But the Gaels didn’t let off the gas, scoring six straight to get back ahead by double-digits and force Fairfield into a timeout. Less than two minutes later, back-toback buckets from Iona gave the Gaels a lead of 45-31, forcing Fairfield to use their second-to-last timeout of the game at the 10:12 mark.
Following a five-plus minute field goal drought from Fairfield, Iona reached its biggest lead of the game of 52-36, with a 3-pointer by Isaiah Ross at 6:07.
However, the Stags caught a break when Iona head coach Rick Pitino was called for a technical after arguing over a personal foul called on the Gaels. Fairfield junior guard Jake Wojcik came in clutch from the charity stripe, making all four of his free throws and right afterward, two more, giving the Stags an 8-0 run and cutting Iona’s lead in half. Wojcik finished the game leading Fairfield with 13 points.