Fairfield knows that its name won’t be mentioned in too many women’s NCAA Tournament pools this week.
But 12th-seeded Fairfield doesn’t care as it prepares to head to Salt Lake City for the Big Dance.
All the Stags are concerned with is No. 5 seed Utah, who they play at 8:30 p.m. Saturday night following Oregon’s game against Iowa. Utah is the host team in this section of the Midwest region.
Fairfield finished 25-5 overall this past season, and an impressive 16-2 in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. But because of its crushing 70-68 defeat to Siena in the MAAC Tournament Championship game, it was forced to sit on that dreaded do-or-die bubble and await the tournament pairings.
Finally, the ESPN Selection show started Sunday afternoon, and when the name Fairfield popped on that screen 15 minutes into the show…
“We just jumped on each other,” senior Allison Thorne said.
The emotion began pouring out as the team, who had been watching it all together, jumped all around and hugged one another in a scene that typifies what March Madness is all about.
“When they started announcing the West region I started to cry,” said senior Gail Strumpf, who is the Stags’ all-time leading scorer with 1,858 points and who has a career total of 1,100 rebounds. “It was projected that we were going to go somewhere out [west], so right then and there I knew I was going to cry because I’d be real, real happy, or because I’d be real, real sad.
“It’s been torture trying to guess whether or not we were going to go.”
This will be Fairfield’s fourth trip to the Big Dance, and while a No. 12 seed is viewed as low by some, it is the highest ever placing for the Stags.
“It’s just pleasing to see the committee think of this program the way it does by selecting us as a 12 seed,” head coach Dianne Nolan said. “And it’s really exciting to me that Fairfield was on that [TV] screen.”
Fairfield, who became the first MAAC women’s team to capture an at-large berth to the tourney since La Salle in 1989, has faced Utah once before. The Utes beat the Stags 78-48 back in the 1987-88 season.