Commitment to defense, complete games has Fairfield on precipice of MAAC title game

 

With wins in six of last nine, Taj Benning and Fairfield are hitting their best stride at most opportune time in MAAC tournament. (Photo by Anthony Sorbellini/Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference)

Entering the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, Jay Young admitted there was a time this season where his Fairfield team was simply, in his own words, not good.

Standing 3-13 on February 7, with losses of 20, 28, and 41 points on their ledger, the second-year head coach of the Stags may have been statistically correct in his assessment, but still, believed better days were ahead. And with wins in six of its last nine contests to reach Friday’s semifinals, Fairfield has a realistic chance to reach an improbable second conference tournament championship game in four years, provided the Stags can get past a Saint Peter’s team that forced a split of the back-to-back series the two programs contested in February.

“We just knew what was at stake, and that just fueled us to play hard and just compete,” forward Supreme Cook said after the Stags made second-seeded Monmouth's tournament stay a short one in Wednesday’s 79-60 quarterfinal upset. “I’m doing my part to help the team, and that’s all I can do.”

“I feel like we have a lot of weapons on this year’s team,” senior guard Taj Benning added. “A lot of guys can do different things. We’re extremely prepared.”

Among the common threads in this unlikely upstart is a commitment to defense. In Fairfield’s recent surge, only once in the past nine games did it allow more than 70 points to an opponent. In the Stags’ two MAAC tournament games against Manhattan and Monmouth, only 58 and 60 were conceded, respectively, a reaffirmation of the suffocating defensive principles Young honed to perfection under Steve Pikiell for the past decade at Stony Brook and Rutgers.

“Coach Young tells us every day (that) if we defend, the sky’s the limit for us,” said Benning. “If we come into every game and do what we have to do on the defensive end, we’ll be in a good spot.”

“Jay’s always gonna keep it real with you,” Cook echoed. “He’s never gonna sugarcoat anything. I guess some people on our team need that, I know I needed that. It’s a lot, but it works.”

Young’s transparency and straightforward candor has played well with a team finding its way and making the most of opportunities late in the season. In the regular season, the Stags showed the largest point improvement from the first games of back-to-back series to the second, a credit to a philosophy of offense merely being a barometer for margins on the scoreboard.

“Defense tells us we’re going to win the game,” Young observed. “Offense only tells us by how much. “Our record didn’t show we had a good season, but towards the latter half of the season, we were defending on a more consistent basis, our offense was improving, and we just had to put more minutes together. We weren’t playing complete games, and when we started doing that, I felt good.”

“We stay focused, honestly,” Benning interjected, underscoring Young’s statement of Fairfield’s objective being to cut down the nets at Boardwalk Hall. “We have a lot of like-minded guys and our goal is to win this whole thing. That’s what’s going to keep us motivated.”