Fairfield Stags Men's Basketball
The Fairfield Stags men's basketball team represents Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut and competes in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference of NCAA Division I. The Stags play their home games in the 9,500 seat, state of the art Webster Bank Arena in Bridgeport, Connecticut and plays two games per season in Alumni Hall back on the campus of Fairfield University. The team is currently coached by Sydney Johnson, the 2011 Ivy League Coach of the Year.
The Stags have experienced the thrill of post-season tournament action fourteen times having competed in the NAIA Tournament in 1951; the NCAA DII Tournament in 1960, 1961 and 1962; the National Invitational Tournament in 1973, 1974, 1978, 1996, 2003; and 2011 NIT; and the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament in 1986, 1987 and 1997. In the 1973 National Invitation Tournament, the Stags advanced to the second round where the team lost by one point to eventual National Champion Virginia Tech. And in the 1997 NCAA Tournament, the Stags nearly achieved a historical upset of top-seeded North Carolina after leading the Tar Heels by seven points at halftime. The team also won the MAAC Regular Season Title in 1986 and the MAAC Championship Tournament in 1986, 1987 and 1997.
Individually, Joe DeSantis earned All-American honors in 1979; Darren Phillip was the nation's top rebounder averaging 14 rebounds per game in 2000; and Deng Gai was the nation's top shot blocker in 2005 averaging 5.5 blocks per game which ranks #5 on the NCAA's all-time blocked shot average list. Thirteen Stags have been either drafted or signed to play in the National Basketball Association.
Read more about Fairfield Stags Men's Basketball: All-Time Head Coaches, Stags in The NBA Draft, Stags in Coaching, WVOF Radio Broadcasts
Famous quotes containing the words men and/or basketball:
“The only way to get along is to seek the difficult job, always do it well, and see that you get paid for it properly. Oh, yes, and don’t forget to exploit men all you can. Because if you don’t they will exploit you.”
—El Dorado Jones (1861–1932)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)