Despite reaching MAAC championship game last March, Jay Young insists his Fairfield team still has room to grow. (Photo by the Hartford Courant)
One of the more unorthodox seasons in recent college basketball memory may have reaffirmed the recent status quo of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference when Iona defended its postseason crown and completed Rick Pitino’s fairytale comeback to the Division I ranks, but the team the Gaels upended to reach the NCAA Tournament was a somewhat unexpected opponent.
Very few would have expected Fairfield to make a late-season run to position itself as the potential Cinderella in the MAAC last year, but the timely surge and commitment to head coach Jay Young’s suffocating defense brought the Stags to the brink of the program’s first conference title in nearly a quarter-century. Five months later, as he returns nearly the entire group from last year’s COVID-riddled campaign, Young admits that while he and his team are proud of the growth displayed in trying circumstances, no one is truly satisfied with how it ended in Atlantic City.
“I think we were satisfied to a point where we got to the championship game, but the outcome was certainly not what we wanted,” the former Steve Pikiell assistant recollected as Fairfield brings heightened expectations into a year where the MAAC as a whole is projected to be on the rise, with the Iona team that denied the Stags a taste of March Madness the presumptive league favorite. “We wanted to go down there, and we talked about bringing a trophy back to Fairfield, and we fell short. So from that aspect, it was disappointing, but I thought we were talented enough and playing well enough at that point in the season to go down there and win the tournament. We felt we were good enough to win that game.”
“I think it was huge. We proved that we belonged and we could play with anybody, and we also have some confidence because we do have everybody back this year. The consistency of our roster, it’s the first year that I’ve had a consistent roster since I’ve been here, and you can even see it in the offseason with guys just hopping into drills and knowing what the drills are. I think we’re all confident that we can have a really good basketball team here, but we also know how much work is ahead of us.”
Coming off a 10-17 season in which Young pulled no punches about the Stags’ record not being where he and his staff want it to be, the third-year head coach is hopeful that his veteran leadership will guide Fairfield through the peaks and valleys in the early part of the schedule. Returning Taj Benning and Jesus Cruz to a rotation that also sees Caleb Green and Jake Wojcik — the latter for a full season — return to the backcourt was a shot in the arm for the program when both Benning and Cruz elected to use the extra years of eligibility afforded to them by the NCAA in light of the pandemic, and do so in familiar confines.
“We’re blessed to have good leaders with our upperclassmen,” Young gushed. “We’ve said this a bunch of times: Caleb’s probably — with a combination of student and leadership — one of the best I’ve ever had. He’s like having a coach on the floor, and I can say the same thing about Taj, Jesus and Jake. They make my job easier. They’re a player-coached team, and when you get to that point, that’s where you want to be as a program. It just shows our younger guys the level of work and culture of our program we need to have, so to answer your question, it’s a big advantage to have guys like that come back and be your leaders.”
In addition to his senior quartet, Young hopes to have Jalen Leach back at 100 percent for the season opener at Providence on November 9, targeting the end of September as an anticipated return to full participation in practice. Leach fractured his foot in the second of two games against Marist last year, and underwent surgery shortly thereafter, prematurely ending his freshman season.
“He’s got a skill that we need, he can score the basketball,” Young said of Leach. “He’s still not back, he’s missed the whole summer, but he was a guy who came in not knowing a whole lot about college basketball and gave us some really good minutes. I think he’s going to be a really important part of what we’re doing, but we’ve just got to get him healthy.”
Going into last season, Young lamented the inability to get his underclassmen into the gym for a full offseason of strength and conditioning, and has cited younger players such as Jason Edokpayi, Chris Maidoh and Allan Jeanne-Rose as some of the biggest beneficiaries this summer of having more time and more reps to further impact the Stags on and off the floor.
“Chris has put on a little extra weight,” Young said. “He got to 210 pounds and we threw a big party for him. He’s feeling more confident. Supreme (Cook) was playing his best basketball at the end of the year, and he’s continued to that into the offseason. Zach (Crisler) has a good IQ, he helps us in so many areas that don’t show up on the box score, and you saw the development of Jason. He had a brutal year with all the COVID issues, just a crazy freshman year. He really kind of helped us with that run we had at the end of the year, and then Shef (Tshiefu Ngalakulondi) has been more consistent, doing a better job in his role. I feel really confident that we’ve got some depth and some quality at the four and five spots.”
Fairfield also welcomes three freshmen to its ranks, as guards Christian Cevis and T.J. Long join the program alongside 6-foot-9 forward Makai Willis of Florida, who could eventually blossom into an all-MAAC forward with his size and burgeoning skill set.
“He’s been a really pleasant surprise,” Young revealed with regard to Willis. “We do have some frontcourt depth, so we’ll see how that’ll play out, but he’s skilled, he’s bouncy. He’s got a body that can play out on the perimeter a little bit, too, so I like what I’ve seen from him so far.”
“T.J.’s a tough kid who can stretch defenses. He’s been a little more scorer than shooter, which I like, and Christian’s a good physical guard to play along Caleb or back him up at the point position. We’ve got 14 scholarship players, so I’m sure we’ll be talking about redshirting a couple of guys at some point.”
Fairfield’s depth and growth will be tested in a non-conference schedule that features a pair of high-major opponents immediately in the opener at Providence and also at Boston College (November 14) to anchor a slate of winnable games that could vault the Stags right into the heart of a competitive MAAC gauntlet.
“I just want us to play good basketball,” a candid Young admitted. “We weren’t good at anything our first 13 games of the season, but we ended up playing the kind of defense I want to play late in the year, especially in the tournament. I just want us to pick up from there and think about how good we’re going to play on November 9 vs. Providence, and certainly do a better job than we did last year.”
With Alumni Hall having been demolished to make way for a new convocation center that will open in 2022, the Stags will once again be playing their home games at Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport this coming year, perhaps affording the opportunity to create an uptick in fan support to supplement the buzz already created by the new building literally in the middle of the Fairfield campus.
“I think it’s a game-changer for us and for the campus, quite honestly,” said Young. “It’s going to be a centerpiece and it gives us a brand-new place where students can roll out of bed and create a real home-court advantage. I’m down there all the time yelling at the construction workers to keep going when they’re on their 15-minute break. The sooner we get in there, the better.”
Before the ribbon is cut on the future home of Fairfield basketball, however, the present remains in a season of upside, and Young is confident that the growth at the end of February and beginning of March will only manifest itself further and in greater detail over a full season.
“Guys enjoy playing here,” he said. “For us, I think it’s important that we build and get guys better. Sustained success for us is to develop guys and get them better. I like this group, and we’ve got a long way to go — I realize that — but I like where we’re at as a program. We’ve got to win more games, make that move now in year three, where we’ve got a winning record, competing again for another championship and playing in the upper half of our league. Those are my expectations for this year’s team.”
“We have a picture in our locker room of the final score of that game last year, and I don’t want our guys to forget that feeling. We want to get back there and win that game.”
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