FAIRFIELD, Conn. – The Fairfield University Women's Soccer team will end the 2019 regular season when they travel to Monmouth University to battle the 2019 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Regular Season Champions on Wednesday at 7pm. The Hawks and the Stags have already clinched the top two seeds in the upcoming tournament and have both advanced to the semifinals on Thursday, Nov. 7.
This match will feature the top two offenses in the conference as the Stags (43) and the Hawks (35) stand atop the MAAC in goals scored. Fairfield's 43 scores are the most by the team since the 2007 season and currently rank 10th in the NCAA.
Twelve of those goals came in the last two games for the Stags after tying a Lessing Field record with eight scores against Iona before winning 4-1 on the road at Siena.
Gabby Diodati led the Stags with six points on the week and was responsible for four of those 12 tallies as she netted a goal and an assist in each contest. For her efforts, Diodati was tabbed the MAAC Offensive Player of the Week for the first time in her career. She currently leads the MAAC with eight assists, a number that ranks her 42nd in the country. Her 18 career assists also places her seventh on the program's career list.
Fairfield is the only team in the MAAC that has a trio of student-athletes that have netted seven or more goals this season.
Nicole Stryjek,
Liz Dumas, and
Stephanie Tsangaris are all tied for fourth in the league with seven tallies apiece.
The Stags also have five players ranked in the top-10 in the MAAC in points with Tsangaris (17), Diodati (16), Stryjek and Dumas (15), and
Brooke Hernon (14). Monmouth and Iona are the only other two schools to have multiple players in the top-10 as each school has a pair.
Tsangaris, Diodati, Hernon, and
Julia McGuire all got into the scoring column in Fairfield's last time out in a 4-1 victory at Siena. The victory combined with a Rider loss to Monmouth, locked the Stags into the second seed in the tournament, their highest finish in the league since 2014.
The Stags' best offense in the league will meet the MAAC's best defense as Monmouth has allowed only four goals all season and just two in conference for a nation's leading 0.26 goals against average overall. The Hawks have not allowed a goal in 554-straight minutes which features six-straight shutouts. Nationally, Monmouth is second in shutout percentage.
Offensively, Lexie Palladino leads the team with eight goals with Dana Scheriff and Madie Gibson behind her with five apiece. Gibson is also Monmouth's biggest playmaker with five assists handed out.
The Stags will next play in the MAAC Championship Semifinal as the second seed at Lessing Field. The game will be played on November 7, with a time to be announced.
