Fairfield to face Indiana in NCAA first round
When Carly ThibaultDuDonis took over for retired Joe Frager as coach of the Fairfield women’s basketball team 20 months ago, no rebuilding process was necessary. Under Frager and behind the play of Lou Lopez Sénéchal, the 202122 Stags swept the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular season and tournament titles and earned their first NCAA Tournament berth in 21 years.
So while there would be a transition — bringing in her players to play her style of ball — there was a foundation laid for her that many first-year coaches don’t have.
“Sometimes when you take over a program you have to kind of start over, revamp, and change the culture,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “I was fortunate to take over a group of great women. Coach Frager’s
been very supportive. You see it all over the place with the Lou effect and what they did.
“One of my thoughts in taking this program was they weren’t starting from zero and had just won a championship. Now how far can we take this and how can we build on this? That will be the start of what we want to do here.”
After a 15-15 season a year ago, Thibault-DuDonis brought in seven players — four freshmen and three transfers — and put together something special. With their 70-62 come-from-behind overtime win over Niagara Saturday in the MAAC tournament final in Atlantic City, N.J., Fairfield (31-1, winner of 29 straight) secured the program’s sixth NCAA Tournament berth.
The Stags will travel to Bloomington, Ind. to face Indiana Saturday (1:30 p.m., ESPN2) in the first
round of the Albany 1 Regional. Farifield is the No. 13 seed, Indiana is No. 4 in a regional topped by No. 1 South Carolina.
Fairfield is 0-5 in NCAA Tournament play. It was a 10-seed in a 40team tournament field in 1988 and a 12-seed in a 48team tournament in 1991. Since the tourney expanded to 64 teams in 1994, the Stags have been a 15-seed in 1998, a 12-seed in 2001, and a 15-seed in 2022.
With a NET ranking of 88 and a NET strength of schedule of 348 entering Saturday’s play, Fairfield likely needed to beat Niagara to get into the Field of 68. But being denied an at-large bid at 30-2 would have been somewhat historic. No 30-win team has been left out of the tournament, according to the NCAA record book. The last two-loss teams to be denied were Canisius and Holy Cross in 1983, the second year of the event, when the field was 36.
The Stags are one of five 30-win teams nationally with the others SEC champion South Carolina (32-0), Mountain West champion Nevada-Las Vegas (30-2), Big 12 tournament champion Texas (30-4), and West Coast Conference regular-season champion Gonzaga (30-3).
But after trailing at halftime for only the fourth time this season and facing a 13-point deficit after Niagara opened the third-quarter scoring, automatic bid or at-large berth were the last things on anyone’s minds.
“We talked a lot at halftime about how we were playing in a way that was not indicative of our identity,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “We played a lot of one-and-one with individuals trying to make things happen versus ball and player movement and having each other’s backs. Defensively we weren’t connected. I told them, ‘You belong in this moment and you have to act like it. You have to act like you’re the No. 1 team in the MAAC and you’re a Top 25 team. You’ve earned it.’
“We were down 10 and one point early in third and I thought, ‘I want this so bad for our women because they’ve done all the right things to get to this point.’ I’m really happy, proud, thankful for them that they’ll get to experience what this moment feels like. I wanted this for them.”
MAAC Player of the Year Janelle Brown scored all 15 of her points in the second half before fouling out with 3.1 seconds left. Freshman Kaety L’Amoreaux scored 10 of her 12 points after intermission while junior Emina Selimovic had a double-double of 11 points and 11 rebounds.
Fairfield, which didn’t take its first lead until 1:51 remained in regulation, scored the first nine points in overtime.
“We don’t get down ourselves,” Brown said. “We try to talk about the things that we need to fix. We talk through it as a team. We don’t have negatives thoughts in our minds. We’re so positive and we’re such an uplifting group. It’s in the culture.
“It was a gritty win, we were fighting the whole way. This is what we worked for. The proof is in the progress. We’re here. It doesn’t matter if I’m Player of the Year or I don’t start, I don’t care about that. I’m worried about my teammates and what we can do to keep this going.”
Brown was named the event’s Most Outstanding Player and was joined on the all-tournament team by Selimovic and L’Amoreaux.
The last MAAC team to win an NCAA Tournament game was Quinnipiac in 2018. The Bobcats defeated Miami-Florida at Gampel Pavilion in Storrs before falling in the second round to host UConn.