Men's Basketball Battles Iona On ESPNU Friday Nigh

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FAIRFIELD, Conn. -- For the second Friday in a row, the Fairfield University men's basketball team will play on the national stage as the Stags take on Iona College at the Hynes Athletic Center. The 9 pm game will be shown on ESPNU, the same network that carried last Friday's Fairfield-Loyola match up.

Fairfield brings a 10-8 overall record and a 2-4 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) mark into the game, while Iona owns an 11-6 overall record and a 5-1 MAAC slate. It will mark the first time that these two teams meet this year.

The Stags are coming off a 67-64 loss to Niagara University last Sunday, a game which featured three ties and eight lead changes. Neither team lead by more than eight points as both teams played a close game for the second time in a week. Justin Jenkins came off the bench to post his first double-digit scoring effort for the Stags, netting a team-high 16 points. Maurice Barrow just missed a double-double with 10 points and nine rebounds.

Derek Needham tallied 10 points in the Niagara game which pushed him over 1,600 career points, just the fifth Fairfield University student-athlete to accomplish the task. Next up on Needham's list of milestones is the 500-assist mark, needing eight more to reach that mark. Only one other Stag tallied 1,600 points and 500 assists in a career, namely Joe DeSantis with 1,916 points and 667 assists).

Needham is the team's top scorer through 18 games with a 13.4 scoring average, followed by Barrow's 8.4 points per game and Matthews' 7.3 points every forty minutes. Amadou Sidibe remains the team's top rebounder with 4.9 per game. Matthews, who blocked four shots against Niagara, averages one block per game.

The Gaels enter tonight's game tied for first place in the MAAC standings. With their 11 wins, more than half of Iona's wins have come at home (6-0 record). Iona comes off a 97-87 win over Canisius at home, the fifth time that the team has scored 90 or more points this season. Iona tallied a season-high with a 100-72 win over Norfolk State in December. The Gaels are averaging a conference-high 82.5 points per game, which also ranks fifth in Division I. Two Iona student-athletes lead the conference in scoring, namely Lamont Jones (22.0 ppg) and Sean Armand (18.9 ppg). Armand comes off a 32-point effort in the win against Canisius, netting nine of 15 three-point tries in the game. Iona will play four of its next five games on the road, including three straight against Loyola, Niagara, and Canisius.

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