There have been a lot of incredible and historic sports seasons at Fairfield University over the years. The 1996-97 men's basketball season was one of them.
 
by Chris Elsberry

The post-game interviews were over. The players had showered, changed back into their warmup gear and grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading back into the arena to watch the rest of the NCAA first round tournament game between Indiana and Colorado.
 
As they walked out of the corridor and into the bright lights and the March Madness atmosphere that was the Lawrence Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, people started to stand. And cheer. Within seconds, the entire building, all 14,368 of them, were clapping and yelling for the team that came incredibly close to making the dream of Cinderella come true.
 
The Fairfield Stags.
 
A biblical 'David' if there ever was one, the Stags fired their slingshot at the mighty North Carolina Tar Heels, a team that would later boast three NBA players, and nearly pulled off the upset of the ages, leading the top seed for close to 35 minutes before finally dropping an 82-74 decision that had a sold-out house roaring for the little team that could.
 
"All those Carolina people," said Fairfield coach Paul Cormier, "When we came out as a team, the second game had started and we were going to sit in the bleachers and watch some of the game. The entire building stood up and gave us a standing ovation. It was unbelievable. I get emotional just thinking about it."
 
So do a lot of people.
 
"That place is flooded with their (North Carolina) fans and when we came out, it was one of the best times of my life," said Darren Phillip, a freshman forward that season. "People are standing; they're cheering; they're asking us for our autographs. They wanted our jerseys. It was unbelievable. Back at the hotel, the whole Colorado team congratulated us. They celebrated us.
 
"I've played (professionally) overseas for 18 years, I've done a lot of stuff and over the years I've been asked several time if I could rewind a part of my life and do it over and over, what would it be and I always say, my freshman season at Fairfield."
 
High Hopes
 
Heading into 1996-97 campaign, Fairfield was coming off a 20-win season, its first 20-win season in almost a decade. Those 20 wins earned the Stags a place in the National Invitation Tournament, playing a 'home' game (at the New Haven Coliseum) against Providence. And with the top four leading scorers -- Greg Francis (16.5), Shannon Bowman (14.4), Shane Miller (13.7) and Kyle Commodore (8.5) – all returning, the Stags were poised to defend its Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular season title and capture another bid to the postseason.
 
"I think we were definitely thinking that {having another successful season) because in the preseason, we were picked to finish first by the coaches," Shannon Bowman said, a senior forward that season. "So, the expectations were high."
 
Especially with incoming freshmen Philip, a 6-foot-6 forward from Brooklyn, N.Y., John Tice, a 6-foot-4 guard from Bayville, N.J., Sunday Eniojukan, a 6-foot-7 forward from Beaconsfield, Quebec, Canada and Andy Buzbee, a 6-foot-6 forward from Paoli, Pa. Packaged to augment sophomores Didier Boucard, Commodore, and Mike Horan, head coach Paul Cormier was confident, that if things went well, Fairfield would be in the thick of the chase for the MAAC title.
 
Things, sadly, didn't go so well.
 
A season opening loss to East Carolina was offset by three straight wins over Colgate, Central Michigan and Wagner before a two-game West Coach trip brought back close losses to Santa Clara and San Francisco. A third straight loss to UConn dropped the Stags under .500 before a win over Southern Utah got them back to the break-even mark.
But all the way to that point, and basically for the rest of the season, Fairfield fought a losing battle against the injury bug, a bug that ended Shane Miller's season after just six games, cost Phillip half the season, forced Bowman to miss a half-dozen games and had Francis playing through pain every time he took to the court.
 
"My feet were burning because of plantar fasciitis," Francis said. "but that was nothing to what the other guys had to deal with."
 
"All year long, we had problems," Cormier said. "Shannon had bone chips in his ankle, Darren also had a very bad ankle. Shane suffered a slipped disc in his back. A tragic injury. Shannon played when he could. There'd be times I would take him out he'd sit down and then, couldn't get up again because the bone chip would dislodge. He couldn't move. We just had to cross our fingers and hope he could play."
 
All those injuries threw several players, especially Tice, Buzbee and Eniojukan – all freshmen – right into the fire. There would be 'learning on the go' it was 'all in' right from the get-go.
 
"It was crazy. I wasn't even expecting to play," Tice said. "I think in the first three or four games, maybe I played a minute or two and then against UConn (the eighth game of the season) I played something like, 30 minutes and that's what I did for the rest of the season."
 
"It was a surreal experience," Eniojukan said. "I didn't come to Fairfield expecting to be a big contributor right away and then all the injuries happen and I'm starting. It was tough, playing Division I basketball and making freshmen mistakes and learning by fire."
 
Said Boucard, "It was really tough. "A lot of guys had nagging injuries and you never knew if or when they were coming back. The only thing we could do was put our heads down and keep going."
 
Trying to stay alive
 
But to just 'keep going,' like Boucard said, was a task in itself. A win on the road at Southern Utah, inched Fairfield to 5-6 for the season and then, the bottom basically fell out of the box. The Stags lost nine of their next 10 games, dropping to 6-15.
 
"It was brutal," Tice said. "Really, that's all I remember, it was brutal. All of those losses piling up … I hated losing and honestly, I didn't see it getting any better."
 
"For a lot of the season, I was the only starter that could play," Francis said. "It ended up being a great year for the rookies in terms of a learning curve. We lost a ton of games but not because we weren't good enough, we just weren't experienced enough to beat teams with just me and four rookies that were playing."
 
Added Phillip, "We had a lot of close losses. We were still trying to jell, trying to get healthy. We had talent but the injuries just made things worse."
 
For the freshmen, Tice played in all 30 games, averaging 9.0 points, shooting 40 percent from the field and 30 percent from 3-point range. He had 54 assists, 24 blocks and 22 steals. Eniojukan also played in all 30 games, averaging 5.4 points and 4.3 rebounds while Buzbee played in 29 games, averaging 3.8 points and 3.1 rebounds.
 
The sophomores, Boucard and Commodore, each played in 29 games with Boucard scoring at a 7.4-point clip with 6.2 rebounds. Commodore averaged 5.7 points and led the team in assists with 78, shooting a solid 36 percent from beyond the 3-point arc.
 
"We had nothing to lose, right? So, here we are, a bunch of young freshmen that doesn't understand the gravity of the situation they're in," Eniojukan said. "We were learning and growing because we were thrown into the fire."
 
That fire reached critical mass on the night of February 8, 1997 when the Stags were blown out of the Marine Midland Arena by Canisius. The final score? 91-45.
It was the worst Division I loss (46 points) in Fairfield history at the time and equaled the all-time worst loss dating back to an 89-43 loss to Holy Cross (and Bob Cousy) on March 18, 1950.
 
"I remember sitting on the bus going back to the hotel after the game. I don't know what happened, but we were particularly bad that game," Eniojukan said. "The coaches were obviously upset with us and we were upset with ourselves. I can't tell you what went wrong other than nothing went right."
 
How bad was it? At one point, Fairfield went eight and a half minutes without scoring a point. From a 33-22 score, Canisius went on a 22-0 run to take a 33-point halftime lead. On top of that, Canisius scored the first 13 points of the second half and coasted to the win. The Stags shot 27 percent for the game (17 of 62) and missed 11 of 12 3-pointers.
 
Worst of all, Francis, who played his high school ball at Oakwood Collegiate Academy in nearby Toronto, Canada, and had dozens of family and friends in attendance, missed all six of his shots and was held scoreless.
 
"It was a nightmare from start to finish," Francis said. "I got into foul trouble and everything went wrong. It was one of those games where we got beat so bad that it made everyone on the team look at themselves and learn another lesson … we had to fall to the bottom and that was the bottom of our season, that night. That was as bad as we could play, and we had to learn how to play better."
 
That night, as things went from bad to worse, Cormier made his frustrations known by benching his starters, For most of the second half, they sat and watched players that rarely saw any time at all -- Peter Van Rij, along with Mike Horan -- play out the string and let Canisius run roughshod.
 
"The kids were doing their own thing and I started benching them," Cormier said. "I wanted them to watch us get hammered. We needed that and it probably was the turning point of the season. They knew I meant business and they knew that in order for us to win it had to be the sum of all parts. If we played as individuals, we had no shot but if we played together, we could play better … and we did down the stretch."
 
Buying in
 
After Canisius, everything changed. Literally. Bowman, who had not been practicing due to the bone chips in his ankle, received an ultimatum from Cormier. Either you practice every day or you don't play at all. Bowman started practicing. Phillip, despite his ankle issues, started to feel better and with those two back in the starting lineup, the Stags confidence slowly started to grow.
 
"We were confident that once we got healthy, we could compete with anyone," Bowman said. "We wanted to get our second wind in the (MAAC) tournament. That was like our second life … we want to go out and prove what we could do."
 
"As we started to get guys back, we felt like we could beat anyone," Francis said. "Our young players were playing a lot of minutes and we had confidence that we could be pretty effective if we could get healthy in time for the playoffs. I kept thinking that we were going to turn the corner. I never thought the season was lost."
 
Said Cormier, "We fought every game. We kept the kids focused and they never felt sorry for themselves, they just kept fighting. When one guy went down, it was the next man up. It was an extraordinary group. I didn't know if they could handle what we were asking them to do but they kept fighting and never lost confidence."
 
Down the stretch, Fairfield defeated Marist and Manhattan and lost close games to Iona, Niagara and Loyola, leaving them at 8-18 heading into the MAAC tournament, the eighth (and last) seed, going against the top-seeded Iona Gaels, a team that the Stags had already lost to twice.

The third time, however, would be the charm.
 
Fairfield led Iona 38-26 at halftime and with 10:37 to play, the Stags led 58-43 and galloped to the finish line. Bowman, bone chips and all, scored 22 points -- making 12 of 14 free throws – while Francis went 3 for 3 from 3-point range and finished with 20. Tice added 13 points and four assists while Phillip contributed eight points, Commodore seven and Boucard six.
 
"March and the MAAC tournament, that was my coming out party. That's when I started to play well," Phillip said. "Tice started to play well. From January on, he was outstanding. His aggression, he was so tough. He wasn't scared about anything. He set the tone all the time, that's what I loved about him. Each guy on the team was a piece of the puzzle. Paul did a great job recruiting, each guy was a blue-collar, lunch pail guy that did whatever they were told to."
 
"Everything just clicked and after (the Iona game) that, there was no stopping us," added Tice. "We just all concentrated on doing what we had to do within the system. I did whatever they told me, defense, rebounding and it all worked out."
 
Said Francis, "All we needed was for things to go well in one game, like that Iona game, and all of a sudden, we were rolling. We were on Cloud 9 that entire tournament."
 
In the semifinals against St. Peter's, Fairfield used 18 points from Phillip, 16 from Francis, 15 from Bowman and 12 from Commodore to knock off the Peacocks 73-61. St. Peter's led 45-44 midway through the second half, but the Stags put together a 14-5 burst to grab a 58-50 advantage. And over the final four minutes, Fairfield made 18 of 20 free throws to keep the Peacocks at bay.
 
"This (MAAC) tournament was a new slate for us," Phillip said. "We threw the regular season out the window. No one expected us to do anything, so we just went out there and played and everyone else had the pressure on them. They were expected to win, we weren't. Playing in the MAAC, my confidence really started to grow."
 
On the morning of the championship game against Canisius, Cormier went to Mass.
 
"I prayed for a miracle," he said.
 
He got one.                                          
 
Francis (MAAC tournament MVP) scored 26 points, Bowman added 22 and Phillip had 14 – good enough to land all three on the all-tournament team – with Tice playing all 40 minutes and Brent Wall giving Cormier 36 gutsy minutes in the absence of Commodore (strep throat) and Boucard (ankle sprain).

With Canisius leading 52-46 with 11:33 to play, Fairfield went on an 18-2 run that gave the Stags a 64-54 lead and that was more than enough to snatch the golden ticket to the NCAA tournament.
 
"We played really good 'team' basketball in the MAAC tournament," Cormier said. "Moving the basketball, the assists. We shot the ball well and moved the ball well. We played together. If Tice needed to get the ball, he got it, if Shannon wanted the ball down low, he got it. Whatever the situation, everyone was in tune, totally unselfish play."
 
"After that Iona game, I knew we were going to win, I honestly felt that," Eniojukan said. "We had incredible confidence."

Read Part II