Tournament Notes
The Fairfield University women's soccer team opens Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Championship play on Friday morning with a quarterfinal matchup with 10th seeded Manhattan College. The game will be played at 11:15 a.m. at ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando, Fla.
The Stags enter the tournament at 11-6-1 on the year and having gone 7-2-1 in MAAC play during the regular season. Manhattan advanced to the quarterfinal game on the strength of a 1-0 win over Quinnipiac on Thursday and is 6-12-1 on the year. The quarterfinal game will be available to watch on ESPN3 (watch) and livestats and complete tournament information are available on the MAAC Tournament Central page.
Fairfield is 21-1-3 all-time against Manhattan, a team the Stags have played in every season as a varsity program. The Stags won the home meeting this season 2-0 and are 7-0-2 against the Lady Jaspers under O'Brien, with a 20-2 scoring margin in those games. Fairfield won that first meeting, 3-0, in 1992 and won again in the 1992 championship, 1-0. The 1993 regular season meeting ended in a 3-3 draw, which was followed by 11 consecutive Stag victories. The Lady Jaspers lone victory came in 2003, 2-0, and since then Fairfield is 8-0-2, with four of those games going to overtime.
Fairfield and Manhattan played through a scoreless first-half, but Sarah Frassetto's first career goal, from a Nikki Stanton corner kick, 78 seconds into the second-half put the Stags ahead 1-0. Pam Coufos scored her first collegiate goal just over six minutes later for an insurance goal. The Stags had a 12-5 advantage in shots and a 7-1 edge in corner kicks on the evening. The Fairfield defense did not allow a shot on goal in the contest.
For the second consecutive year the Stags enter the postseason with 11 wins, going 11-3-1 after a three-game season opening losing streak. It marks the 10th time the Stags have reached double digits in wins and the fifth time under ninth-year head coach Jim O'Brien. The Stags have won two MAAC Championships under the direction of O'Brien, including the 2005 crown at ESPN Wide World of Sports.
Graduate student Nikki Stanton is the only current player that has been part of a championship at Walt Disney World. She was redshirting her freshman season in 2009 when the Stags dropped a 2-1 decision in the quarterfinals to Niagara. This season Stanton has a team-best seven assists and is tied for second on the squad with 11 points. A two-year captain, she has started all 18 games for the Stags this fall. Stanton has 27 career points and 15 assists, one shy of mobbing into an eighth place tie on the Stags career list.
Fairfield enters tournament play having scored 31 times in 18 games and ranking 88th in the nation. It is the most goals the Stags have scored in a season since 2009, when they scored 34 times in 21 games. Of the 24 field players that have seen action this season, 20 have earned at least one point. A dozen of those players have scored goals, with six scoring more than once, while 16 players recording at least one assist this year.
Ashley Small scored four times in her first two seasons with the Stags, a number she eclipsed seven games into her senior campaign. She has scored 12 times and enters the postseason tied atop the MAAC in goals scored. Small has six game-winning goals, including three straight against Hartford, American and Holy Cross in September. She has one assist as well, for a team-best 25 points, but could get credit on two others, as she was pulled down in the box resulting in a PK goal for the Stags.
The Fairfield defense has been impressive this season as well, holding opponents to 15 goals during 18 regular season games, a 0.82 GAA for the year. The Stags allowed just 9.3 shots per game with just 71 of 167 being put on cage, or 3.9 per game. Fairfield had eight shutouts this season and allowed just four teams to score more than one goal in a game. Fairfield completed the regular season 52nd in the nation in GAA, but 297th in saves per game, just hammering home the point of how good the Stags defense has been this fall.
Kathleen Early is having a season that will put her name into the single-season record book. She enters the postseason with a GAA of 0.70, which is the third-best number in program history, behind the 2008 (0.60) and 2011 (0.63) efforts of current assistant coach Kelly Boudreau. Early has stopped 51 shots on the year, for a .823 save percentage, with a season-high six at Army in the season opener and again in the win over Yale. Early has played 1,414 minutes, a career-high, and allowed only 11 goals. She has seven solo clean sheets and combined for an eighth.
Fairfield rookies have been a large part of the Stags success this season, combining to appear in 95 games and earning 38 total starts. The group has scored 12 times, with four game-winners to their credit, and had four assists. It was rookies, four of them, that notched goals in the Stags Senior Day win on Lessing Field to complete the unbeaten home slate for Fairfield.
