Fairfield’s dream season comes to end with loss to Indiana
The dream season for the Fairfield women's basketball team came to an end Saturday.
The Stags, ranked 25th in the nation and seeded 13th in the NCAA Tournament, fell to fourth-seeded Indiana 89-56 at Assembly Hall in Bloomington before 12,753.
Fairfield (31-2), which set a record for wins in a single season, had won 29 straight since a threepoint loss at Vanderbilt Nov. 12.
Fairfield coach Carly Thibault-Dubonis, who signed a three-year contract extension Thursday, has put the Stags in the national spotlight in just her second season. After going 15-15 in her first season replacing retired coach Joe Frager, Thibault-DuDonis and the Stags have made history in her second year with a 31-win season, including a perfect Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference season, the first national ranking for the program,
and an NCAA Tournament berth.
Indiana advances to play the winner of Saturday's late game between fifth-seeded Oklahoma or No. 12 Florida Gulf Coast for a spot in the Sweet 16 in the Albany (N.Y.) 1 Regional
Monday night.
MAAC Player of the Year Janelle Brown, a 5foot-6 senior guard, led the Stags with 19 points and six rebounds. Freshman forward Meghan Anderson, the MAAC Rookie of the Year, added 10 points.
Fairfield trailed 38-34 at halftime, but managed just 22 points in the second half. Anderson's layup with 4:47 left in the first half put the Stags up 31-26 before Indiana closed with a 12-3 run to end the half.
Sara Scalia led Indiana with 27 points while the trio of Mackenize Holmes, Yarden Garzon and Chloe Moore-McNeil each scored 13.
Fairfield was making its sixth NCAA Tournament overall and second in three seasons. The Stags are 0-6, last falling 70-52 at Texas in 2022.
Indiana improves to 16-0 at Assembly Hall this season, including an 86-69 rout of Caitlin Clark and Iowa on Feb. 22. The Hoosiers averaged 10,038 fans per home game.
“Fairfield has become our home, and the people here have become our family,” Thibault-DuDonis said in a statement Thursday after the contract extension was announced. “This place is incredibly special, starting with the passionate, caring, and driven people that come together to strive for excellence. This can be and is becoming one of the elite women's basketball schools in the country, and we've been able to prove that to be true in the last few years.”