The Fairfield University men's lacrosse team plays its final regular season game of the year on Saturday, when it travels to Colorado for a meeting with #5/6 University of Denver. The Stags are 7-6 overall and 3-2 in ECAC Lacrosse League play, while the Pioneers are 12-2 on the season and 5-0 in conference play. Fans can visit the Denver athletic website for viewing options for the game.

The Stags have clinched the number-three seed in the May 5-7 ECAC Lacrosse League Tournament which will be hosted by Denver. Fairfield will play #2 Loyola University Maryland on Thursday, May 5 in the second semifinal, which is set to face-off at 7 p.m. mountain time. Denver has locked up the top-seed and will take on either Ohio State or Air Force in the first semifinal at 4 p.m. The championship game will be played on Saturday, May 7 at 11 a.m. mountain time and will air live on ESPNU with the winner earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Andy Copelan coached his 40th game as the Stags head coach at Ohio State on April 23rd and the 11-9 victory gave him his 40th career win as a head coach. Now in his third season at Fairfield, Copelan, the fifth youngest Division I head coach in the country this season, has led the Stags to a 22-18 record. He began his coaching career at Marist College in 2004 as the youngest coach in the nation and led the Red Foxes to an 18-15 record and a berth in the NCAA Tournament in 2005. Copelan begins play today with a career coaching record of 40-33.

Saturday marks the seventh ever meeting between these two squads with each team posting three victories. The Pioneers won the teams first-ever ECAC meeting, 9-8, last season in a game played at Rentschler Field in Hartford, Conn. The Stags last victory came in 2005 with a 9-8 win at home to clinch the Great West Lacrosse League title. Fairfield has twice travelled to Denver for a game, winning 12-11 in 2002 and falling 16-9 in 2004.

Denver is riding a seven-game win streak entering Saturday's contest, including a 12-9 win over the defending national champion, Duke. The Pioneers are scoring 13 goals per game, second in the nation, behind leading scorer Mark Matthews and his 34 goals and 53 points. Alex Demopoulos is second on the squad with 44 points including a team-best 21 assists. Jamie Faus has played 689 minutes in net for the Pioneers and has made 122 saves and enters the game with a .555 save percentage and an 8.53 GAA.

Today's match-up features the Stags ninth-ranked scoring defense, and the Pioneer's second-ranked scoring offense. It will also be a showdown of the Stags sixth-ranked man-down defense and the Pioneers fourth-ranked man-up offense. Fairfield's third-ranked man-up offense will look to take advantage of Denver's 57th ranked man-down defense. Denver averages the fourth-most ground balls in the nation, while the Stags enter the week ranked 57th nationally in that category.

Charlie Cipriano stopped a dozen shots in the Stags win over Ohio State, his ninth double-digit save effort of the year. He has stopped a personal-best 144 shots this season, an average of 11.1 per game, which is 13th in the country. Cipriano leads the league in both save percentage, .598, and GAA, 7.47, ranking sixth and 10th nationally in those categories. He stopped a season-best 16 shots against Loyola, part of a four-game stretch in which he made at least 12 saves in each game. He has now earned the ECAC Defensive Player of the Week award three times this season. Cipriano has now made 282 saves in his Fairfield career, tied for fourth on the Stags career list.

 

Fairfield made only one man-down stop against Ohio State, but remains ranked sixth in the nation with a penalty kill percentage of 78.4 percent. The Stags have been perfect in man-down situations in seven games this season. Fairfield did not allow an opponent an extra-man goal in the first three games of the year until Villanova went 2-7. The Stags then were a perfect 6-6 in man-down situations against Vermont and Air Force. Fairfield finished sixth in the nation in 2010 in man-down defense, allowing foes to score just 25 percent (13-52) of the time.

Max Trunz dished out a career-best four assists in the Stags win at Ohio State and now leads the team with 21. His 1.62 assists per game ranks 20th in the nation and second in the ECAC entering the week. It is a single-season personal best for Trunz, who is now ninth in school history with 46 career assists. The four point effort propelled him to a share of the team lead in points, 26, as he has tallied five goals this season. Over the last five games, Trunz has scored four times with 10 assists. He collected his 10th ground ball of the season at Ohio State.