CCSU falls in OOC finale to Fairfield, but Sellers still pleased with start to season

By Connor Wilson (@Conman_815)

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — Entering Thursday’s non-conference finale, Patrick Sellers and his Central Connecticut State Blue Devils had a good idea of what his team would look like after a successful first six weeks or so of the season.

CCSU picked up multiple Power 5 victories in November after only having one in its Division I history, defeating Boston College and Rutgers. There were certainly bumps outside of those two signature victories, such as the opening week 22-point loss to Quinnipiac, or dropping back-to-back road games to Seton Hall and Northeastern. None of those defeats stung as much as what transpired on Thursday, however.

The Blue Devils dropped their first home game of the season, 84-70, to in-state foe Fairfield.

“It’s a disappointing loss,” Sellers said. “(Fairfield) came in here and took it right to us and we, in my opinion, didn’t handle it right and respond right. We let our offensive woes bleed into our defense.”

You may look at first glance and see the 14-point loss and think it wasn’t that bad, but once you learn that Fairfield led by as many as 31 early in the second half and dominated for the vast majority of the night, your opinion may change.

“We don’t ever want to get down like that in a game,” Darin Smith, Jr. said. “We just have to learn how to fight back and punch back and start games off right.”

Smith had a team-high 20 points on the night, reaching his scoring average through the first 10 games. The redshirt sophomore has been a revelation for Sellers this year as one of the top returners and has had his key moments, but struggled on Thursday, shooting 7-for-19 from the field.

The other two stars for the Blue Devils had off nights as well. Jay Rodgers only had five points, but was able to reach and exceed his season average in the assist column, dishing out eight dimes. Max Frazier had nine points in the first half before going down early in the second half with what Sellers believes to be a concussion. This resulted in a Division I opponent season-low 19 minutes for the center.

“He might have a concussion.” Sellers said. “He got hit in the first half and was woozy. I didn’t realize he was woozy until the trainer said we had to check him for a concussion.”

Once the Stag lead reached its highest point, at 60-29, the Blue Devils outscored Fairfield by 17 the rest of the way, carried by some unsung heroes off the bench. Freshman Ashton Reynolds hadn’t really been in the rotation yet this season before being thrown in the second half tonight, and scored 10 points in 14 minutes. He ended up as a plus-15 in the box score, the only CCSU player to be positive.

“Ashton Reynolds came off the bench and gave us some real pop and lift,” Sellers said. “He gave us such a spark off the bench and kind of got us down to a manageable deficit.”

Melo Sanchez chipped in 13 points and three triples off the bench as well. All in all, CCSU closed the final 14 minutes of the game on a 41-24 run to make things appear much closer than the final score indicated.

The loss closes the book on non-conference slate for 2025 before the team picks back up again in the new year for NEC play. The Blue Devils finished 6-5, but it certainly felt a lot better than that. If you were to ask Sellers where he thinks the team is in terms of expectations coming in, he’d definitely have to take it.

“If you told us 6-5 at the start of the season, we’d probably say that we’d take it,” Sellers said. “We wanted more and thought we could be better. We had two disappointing performances in the Northeastern game and this game. All in all, when you look at the totality of the non-conference, you have to be pleased with it.”

Things get real for CCSU in January pretty quick in conference play. The Blue Devils open up NEC play on the road at LIU on January 2, in a matchup between the two teams picked to finish at the top of the league. The tip for that contest is set for 7 p.m. in Brooklyn.

“We open up with probably the best team in the league,” Sellers said. “So it's going to be a really daunting task right from the jump, and we’re gonna need to put in a lot of work in the next couple weeks to prepare for that.”