MAAC Semifinals vs. Quinnipiac, Sunday @ 9:30 PM on ESPNU: Tickets, Pregame Reception & On-Campus Watch Party

                You can understand why Head Coach Sydney Johnson puts little thought into the seedings of a conference tournament.  It wasn't until late Sunday night that Johnson even looked at where his team would be positioned for this year's Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Tournament.

                "I told Joe DeSantis, one of our greats here at Fairfield, that I didn't look at the seedings for the tournament until an hour into the Manhattan-Quinnipiac game that Sunday night," Johnson said. "The reality is it is all about them, the team. Where teams finish or who beats who really doesn't help us. We have to play well, we have to play hard, and we have to learn from our mistakes to keep this thing going. So I never talked to the team about seedings because I don't think that focusing on others will help us. We have to do what we have to do to advance."

                The Stags did what they have done throughout their current winning streak, which was extended to six games with their 90-77 win over Niagara University in a MAAC Tournament quarterfinal contest on Saturday night. While Coach Johnson and the team may have been indifferent to this year's seedings, it has not been lost on most everyone else that the top three seeds – #1 Rider University, #2 Cansius College, and #3 Niagara University – all lost their quarterfinal game.

                "We know what we are capable of as a team so what happens outside of that doesn't really matter," Ferron Flavors Jr. said. "We know what we can do and that we are capable of winning the tournament so we just need to concentrate on one game at a time."

                The next game that the Stags will concentrate on is Sunday night's semifinal matchup. And there is one guarantee that everyone will agree on and that is there will be a Connecticut-based school playing for the 2018 MAAC men's basketball championship on Monday night. Fairfield will face Quinnipiac University, which beat second-seeded Canisius College on Friday night, in a Sunday 9:30 pm semifinal game with the winner earning the right to play for the title and the conference's automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Ninth-seeded Saint Peter's will play fourth-seeded Iona at 7 pm in the other semifinal match-up.

                Fairfield controlled all aspects of this game from the opening tip. Jonathan Kasibabu actually controlled the tip but the ball ended up in Niagara's possession. The winner of the tip may seem insignificant but Niagara scored off that possession, a layup from Greg King just 14 seconds into the game. The significance comes from the fact that it would be the Purple Eagles' only lead of the game.

                After King's basket, Tyler Nelson scored four straight points and Kasibabu added a three-point play to push Fairfield in front by a 7-2 count just minutes into the game. The four points were just the start of what could be one of Nelson's best MAAC tournament game performances as the senior would finish with game-highs in points and rebounds, picking up a double-double with 27 points and 10 rebounds. And if that wasn't enough, how about the senior throws in seven assists against one turnover along with one steal.

                "I was just trying to play like every other game by being aggressive and trying to get my teammates involved," Nelson said. "I got hot early and hit my open shots and that got us going."

                The Stags didn't seem to have trouble on this night in terms of getting their offense going. After taking a 7-2 lead, the Stags would eventually open a double-digit lead after Jerome Segura's running one-hander made the score 24-13 with 10:33 left in the first half. The Purple Eagles were able to cut the lead to under 10 points on a couple of occasions later in the first half, but Fairfield would eventually run its lead to 14 points after Ferron Flavors Jr. hit a jump shot that pushed the score to 43-29. Niagara rallied for five straight points in the final minute but Segura's three-point shot at the buzzer from 25-feet away sent Fairfield into the locker room with a 46-34 advantage. Nelson finished the half with 19 points to lead all scorers.
 
                Niagara came out in the second half and made a run at the Stags with an 11-5 run that cut the halftime deficit in half, 51-45, at the 16:25 mark. Freshman Jesus Cruz stopped Niagara's run with long three pointer that sent the lead back to nine points and started a 14-7 run that gave the Stags a 13-point lead at the 12:10 mark, a run that ended with a layup by Cruz.
 
                The Stags never relented its double-digit lead and ended the game with a 13-point margin of victory.
 
                Flavors Jr. ended the game with 18 points, 12 of which came in the second half, while Wassef Methnani came off the bench to score 15 points in 14 minutes of work. Dominic Robb posted a career-high 29 points for Niagara with a supportive 21 points from Khalil Dukes.