Stags prove they belong
By winning two games at regionals, Fairfield justified its at-large bid
How was your weekend? Bill Currier’s was crazy. Maybe even a little chaotic, albeit rewarding.
Chew on this for a second: Fairfield baseball won its first-ever NCAA Tournament game on Saturday in Texas, beating Southern 6-2. But Currier wasn’t there to see it. Instead, the longtime Stags coach was some 1,900 miles away in Vermont, attending his son’s wedding.
The next day, though, Currier was back in the dugout.
Two games. Not much sleep.
“And,” Currier said Wednesday, “I’d do it again next week.”
Fairfield’s historic season ended Sunday with a 12-2 loss to No. 2 overall seed Texas in the Austin Regional final. The Stags, their pitching staff on fumes, fell into a 9-0 hole in the third inning.
“Our first three or four pitchers were guys who hadn’t thrown yet,” Currier said. “It was a crapshoot of how they were going to do with 10,000 fans screaming at them. They didn’t respond well, obviously.”
Still, the Stags showed well in the regional, proving they were absolutely deserving of receiving an unprecedented at-large bid out of the MAAC. They went 2-2, falling to Arizona State, defeating Southern, and then upsetting the Sun Devils in a rematch.
“The success that we had there, it legitimized the record of our team,” said Currier, whose Stags finished a school-record 39-5. “It showed that we could play with some big Power
Five teams. … You can’t take us for granted. We’re not just going to go there, lose two and go home.”
“We really showed the strength of the MAAC, too,” he added. “We’ve got some good programs in the MAAC.”
Currier credited his team for not hanging their heads after their opening loss to Arizona State, in which they blew a one-run lead in the ninth inning. Facing elimination, the Stags responded the next day in Currier’s absence to knock off Southern.
Not wanting to miss a second straight game, Currier caught one of the first flights out of Boston on Sunday. He landed in Austin around 11 a.m. Central time, two hours before first pitch.
And this time it was the Stags who rallied, coming back from 5-0 down in the third against the perennial powerhouse Sun Devils to win 9-7.
“ASU, Barry Bonds and Dustin Pedroia, it’s one of the most storied programs of the last 50 years of college baseball,” Currier said. “You know that. It’s one of the biggest traditional powerhouses. … We bounced back well.”
The Stags threw ace left-hander Michael Sansone
for three innings that game, leaving both him and right-hander Jake Noviello unavailable to face Texas. The Stags were forced to turn to sophomore Jack Erbeck, who hadn’t pitched all season.
Currier is hoping to carry some of Fairfield’s success into next season. He anticipates most of the roster returning, including his catcher and MAAC Player of the Year Mike Caruso. The Wallingford native, who led the Stags with a .414 batting average, missed the NCAA Tournament after breaking his jaw in practice the week prior.
That said, Currier doesn’t anticipate matching this year’s record. The Stags will go back to playing non-conference games early next season, meaning the schedule should be considerably more difficult. Currier expects to have some opponents finalized in the coming weeks.
“I think we’re going to be pretty strong next year,” Currier said. “No guarantees. You’ve got to start over again. I don’t think we’ll see another 39-5 again, but I do think we’ll do OK.”