Photo Courtesy Quinnipiac Athletics
By: Dylan Fearon
Quinnipiac and Fairfield love to split their regular season series.
For the third straight year, the in-state rivals have done just that, with each team winning on the road. Quinnipiac’s last three losses to Fairfield have come in overtime or later.
The most recent matchup was Friday night, when Fairfield defeated Quinnipiac 89-86 at the TD Bank Sports Center, needing an extra five minutes to take down the Bobcats on their home floor.
“They’ve been hard fought games,” Quinnipiac head coach Tom Moore said about the recent battles against Fairfield. “The margin between winning or losing any of these games is so thin…we’ve been pretty close to them, they’ve been close to us in the standings. Last year they were much higher than us in the standings but the other two years we’ve been close with them in the standings.”
The Stags were up 16 points late in the first half, and had a 14 point lead with 17:32 remaining in the game. But Quinnipiac, just like in the first matchup between the two teams this season, stormed back.
Peter Kiss was Ol’ Reliable late on. First, the freshman finished nicely at the rim to give Quinnipiac a one point lead with 31 seconds left. Then, Kiss blocked Fairfield big man Amadou Sidibe at the rim, and then knocked down two free throws to give the Bobcats a three-point lead with nine seconds remaining. This was the tail end of a 24-7 Quinnipiac scoring run.
Up three, Moore elected to foul Fairfield’s Curtis Cobb instead of letting the Stags shoot a three-pointer. After making both at the line, Quinnipiac’s Phil Winston was fouled and hit just one of two at the line to give the Bobcats a 78-76 lead with 3.6 seconds to go.
Quinnipiac was one stop away from another comeback victory against Fairfield.
But Tyler Nelson had other plans.
Inbounding from underneath its own basket, Fairfield had to travel the length of the floor. Sidibe caught the ball at mid court off the inbound and darted a pass to a cutting Nelson on the right elbow. The star guard sprinted into the lane after a couple dribbles and finished easily at the rim, forcing overtime.
“It’s more credit to them,” Moore said. “I don’t think we defended the last inbound great, and they ran a very good play. Nelson made a really high IQ play right in front of our bench to set the whole thing up.”
Just like regulation, Fairfield controlled the overtime session early, forcing Quinnipiac to come back again. The Bobcats, down three, had a shot to tie it with a deep Peter Kiss three-pointer that went wide right, giving the Stags a win it had waited 11 days for.
“It’s a happy locker room,” Fairfield head coach Sydney Johnson said. “The guys really wanted to work hard to try to get this one. Thankfully, they kept playing. Credit Quinnipiac in the first game, they played all the way through to the final buzzer and that’s what got them the win, and I felt like Fairfield did that today.”
“It’s a rivalry game, it’s certainly become that. I thought there energy was great…we just did not want to lose tonight.”
There have been multiple occasions where Quinnipiac has hosted big games and fallen short each time. Back on Jan. 30, Quinnipiac had a chance to get to .500 in Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference play with a win against Siena, and fell short to the Saints by nine on SNY. Then on Feb. 9, the Bobcats needed a win against Saint Peter’s on ESPN3 to improve to 8-7 in MAAC play, but were dismantled by the Peacocks 76-45.
And then Friday night, already on a two-game skid and with the MAAC Tournament around the corner Quinnipiac, which needed a win against Fairfield on ESPNU to help it potentially snag the fifth and final bye, came out lost on defense and didn’t nearly have enough in the tank to defeat the Stags.
“We’re still very young across the board,” senior Daniel Harris said. “It’s all experience. When you look at the Saint Peter’s game, they have all seniors on that team, so they came in with a mission. The Siena game as well. They have all seniors, they came in on a mission. Tonight, a lot of those guys have been playing for three or four years, so they have experience. When you look at it, it’s all really experience.”
Moore refuses to use the youth as an excuse anymore.
“I can’t keep going back to that,” Moore said, referring to Quinnipiac’s experience. “We laid some eggs in November and December here and I was worried that we’d never have an identity or never find ourselves… I do think we’ve been out-experienced maybe. I guess we’ve been out-experienced in those spots, in the MAAC…Saint Peter’s we lay an egg. Siena, we lose Donovan (Smith) and they hammer us physically.
Now on a three-game losing streak, Quinnipiac is 7-10 in MAAC play, tied for seventh in the standings with Rider. With just three games to go in the regular season before the conference tournament in Albany, a first round bye is no longer possible for the Bobcats.
But Moore is focused on his team’s next game, a battle at Manhattan on Sunday.
“The clock waits for no one… we have to get up tomorrow, we’ll have a good practice. We have to bounce back.”
