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FAIRFIELD, Conn. -- The Fairfield University men's basketball team plays the second of its five-game road trip on Saturday night when it heads to Old Dominion University for a 7 pm match up. The Stags started the trip with a 60-57 victory at Saint Joseph's University on December 22. This will be the 11th off-campus game for Fairfield, already playing seven road games and three neutral site contests.

Derek Needham scored a game-high 24 points in the victory, including the game-winning three-point shot with 16 seconds remaining in regulation. The guard tallied 16 points in the opening half and added four points in the final 16 seconds. He finished the scoring with a free throw with six seconds left. For his efforts, Needham earned his second Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) player of the week award. He is Fairfield's top scorer with a 15.2 scoring average.

Amadou Sidibe was the only other Stag in double figures with 10 points and just missed a double-double with nine rebounds. He remains the team's top rebounder with 5.9 rebounds every forty minutes. Marcus Gilbert returned to the lineup and tallied eight points which included a pair of three-point field goals. Gilbert moved up to fourth in the MAAC for three-point field goal percentage at .444.

After the Old Dominion game, Fairfield will return to MAAC play with a two-game swing through upstate New York. The Stags will start the weekend with a game against Canisius on January 3 and will follow up with a January 5 meeting with Niagara. The five-game road trip ends with a drive down to Baltimore for a January 11 game against Loyola on ESPNU.

Old Dominion halted a nine-game losing streak with a win over the University of Virginia last Saturday. Old Dominion trailed by five points at halftime, but rallied to outscore the Cavaliers by seven points in the second half. ODU trailed 34-24 before executing a 21-4 run that put the Monarchs in control of the game during the second half. Only four student-athletes scored for Old Dominion, led by Dimitri Batten's career-best 23 points. Batten tallied 14 of the team's 21 points during that decisive second-half run. Aaron Bacote added 17 points, while DeShawn Painter completed a double-double with 11 points and 11 rebounds.

Painter leads the team in both scoring (7.7 points per game) and rebounding (7.7 per game). Donte Hill is the other Monarch student-athlete to own a double-digit scoring average, tossing in 10.3 points every forty minutes. The team is averaging nearly five three-point field goals per game (58 made in 12 games) with Bacote pacing the long-range shooting (17 of 47).