ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — After making it to the MAAC women’s basketball championship for the first time since the 2018-19 season, the Bobcats stared the Stags in the face — their second matchup in a week — for the title Saturday afternoon.
Fairfield, the reigning MAAC champion, took down the Bobcats 76-53 to be crowned the MAAC champions for the second-straight year. But how did the Stags pull it out?
Fairfield did it by outclassing the Bobcats in every facet of the game.
After “leaving the offense at the hotel” during its semifinal matchup against Mount St. Mary’s, as Fairfield head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis put it, the Stags broke out to their best offensive game of the MAAC Tournament.
Fairfield broke down a Bobcats defense that had been formidable in its previous two MAAC Tournament games, holding both No. 10 Iona and No. 6 Merrimack to under 52 points and 35% from the field.
The Stags exploited gaps in a Quinnipiac zone that had been strong, but allowed multiple wide-open three-pointers. This was their key to victory, as the No. 2 Bobcats struggled to recover. The fourth quarter sealed the win for Fairfield, with the Stags hitting six of their 15 threes.
“It was totally their day,” Quinnipiac head coach Tricia Fabbri said. “There was not much we could do or adjust or try to play better, to take it away when you have Scott going six for six, but you know, you got to give them credit. It doesn’t feel great.”
A big reason for that was junior guard Sydni Scott, who was perfect from behind the arc and it seemed like every possession ended with the Prospect Park, Pennsylvania, native’s hands on the ball.
“For me, it wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when,” sophomore guard Kaety L’Amoreaux said. “Having her on that court was huge, and knowing that she was gonna hit those threes.”
It wasn’t just Scott who thrived from deep; the Stags had their best three-point percentage of the season at 51.7% on 29 attempts.
While offense can win you games, defense wins you championships. This statement was put on the forefront for the Stags, and their best way of defeating the Bobcats, was stopping No. 14.
On every inbound, whether after a basket or a timeout, Scott and L’Amoreaux doubled freshman guard Gal Raviv, preventing any inbound pass into the Kadima, Israel, native. This forced the Bobcats to bring down sophomore guard Karson Martin or sophomore center Anna Foley to help break it.
“We wanted someone else to bring the ball up,” L’Amoreaux said. “So that was just our initial plan.”
For the 40 minutes that Raviv played, there was a Stag either doubling or face-guarding her, making the offense run through others instead of the MAAC Player of the Year. The rest of the Bobcats did their best, but the pesky Stags’ defense limited the Bobcats to their lowest point total of the season — 53 points — after scoring over 60 points in the last two games
“I thought they did just a great job locking us down,” Fabbri said. “And then in our ball their ball screen coverage was really good. We couldn’t squeak anything by them. And then again, when you’re behind and then you’re really playing catch up, there was a lot of pressure on every possession.”
The Stags will move on to the NCAA Tournament for the second-straight year and the third time in the last four years. They will wait until tomorrow night to learn what seed is given to them by the selection committee.
“(We) scheduled every big conference that we could so that we could do the best on our end, to give ourselves the best NET (ranking),” Thibault-DuDonis said. “We believe, without a shadow of a doubt, we deserve an 11 seed.”
The Bobcats leave Atlantic City empty-handed, but will look ahead to next year still with a young core and a family-like atmosphere.
“I’ll always look back and be grateful for this team, like everybody on this roster was a family this year, so win or lose, like we’re so grateful to have the opportunity at all,” Foley said. “It’s just going to motivate us to make a run in whatever game we play next and just be grateful that we got to share the court together at all.”
