February 24, 2009
Another award for Ahna
Congratulations to Ahna Johnson of the Fairfield's women's soccer team, who added another award to her already overcrowded trophy case. The Stags midfielder was named the Connecticut Junior Soccer Association Ed Tremble Female Player of the Year at the organizations annual banquet earlier this month.
Here's the rest of the release ...
“The most recent honor that Ahna has received from Connecticut Junior Soccer Association is yet another great accomplishment which is well deserved,” said Stags fourth-year head coach Jim O’Brien. “As an in-state unknown Ahna has grown in to a dominant soccer player and highly decorated student. It was a thrill to present Ahna to the Connecticut Youth Soccer membership at the President's dinner.”
For Johnson it is another in the long line of accolades during her career, and most especially, her senior season. She became the first player in program history to earn NSCAA/adidas All-America accolades, being named to the third team in December. She followed that in January by being named to the SoccerBuzz All-America Fourth Team. She also collected NSCAA/adidas First Team All-Northeast Region accolades, as well as being named the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Offensive Player of the Year and Tournament MVP.
She has found accolades in the classroom as well, becoming the first player in program history to earn NSCAA/adidas Scholar All-America First Team Accolades. Johnson was also named ESPN The Magazine First Team All-America as selected by CoSida, was named to the NSCAA/adidas Scholar All-East Region First Team and is a three-time MAAC All-Academic Team selection.
Johnson led the Stags with 15 goals, including seven game-winning tallies, and 34 points, in leading the team to a 15-5-3 record this season. Fairfield captured its seventh MAAC Tournament Title and made its fifth NCAA Tournament appearance. The 15 wins is the second most in a single-season in program history. For Johnson and her senior classmates who won 45 games in four years, it marked the second NCAA Tournament appearance of their careers.
Johnson will graduate as one of the top offensive players in program history. She played in 81 career games, fourth all-time, and finished with 79 starts, second all-time. Her 29 goals are fifth-most of any player in Stags history, while ranking fourth with 10 career game-winning goals. Johnson finished her career with 71 points which is the sixth most in the program's history.
Posted by celsberry on 12:55 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Postseason likely gone for Fairfield women
They blew it.
The Fairfield University women’s basketball team had a chance stay locked in a tie for second place with Canisius Monday night playing Rider at Alumni Hall.
All they had to do was win.
But they didn’t.
Rider – with just nine wins on the season – beat the Stags 51-46. Fairfield shot just 25.8 percent from the floor for the game. And that awful percentage probably cost them their best chance to make the postseason.
The Stags (17-11, 12-5) fell a game behind the Golden Griffins (21-7, 13-4) for second place with one to play. Canisius faces Niagara on Saturday. Fairfield plays at Manhattan (9-18, 6-10).
If Fairfield had finished in a tie for second place in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference regular season standings with Canisius, the Stags could have secured the No. 2 seed with a St. Peter’s win over Iona on Saturday. Since Fairfield and Canisius split their head-to-head series and since both teams spilt with MAAC regular champion Marist, the tiebreaker would go to the team’s results against the next highest team in the standings, fourth place St. Peter’s.
The Stags swept the Peahens, Canisius spilt. That would have given Fairfield second place.
And second place could have meant a berth in the Women’s NIT.
You see, if the regular season MAAC champion also wins the conference tournament, say Marist, then the WNIT automatically selects the second place regular season finisher. That would have been Fairfield.
Now, it’s likely going to be Canisius.
All the Golden Griffins have to do is beat Niagara … that’s 2-26 Niagara. The Golden Eagles have won exactly one MAAC game all season. They are not going to beat Canisius. Not on Canisius’ home court. No how. No way.
What this means is, if Marist wins the MAAC tournament (and it probably will), Canisius will go to the WNIT. Where will Fairfield go? Nowhere. Unless they win the postseason tournament in Albany.
And I just don’t see that happening.
The Stags are going to end up with another great year under Joe Frager. They could win 20 games if they reach the MAAC tournament finals. Still, they most likely will have nothing to show for their season-long efforts because they shot 25 percent against a team with a losing record (at home) when it mattered the most.
And that's gotta hurt.
Posted by celsberry on 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 22, 2009
Another heartbreaker for Stags
Another hard fought game. Another heartbreaking loss.
The Fairfield Stags had a chance to knock off another solid opponent Saturday night but made a couple of critical mistakes in crunch time in falling to Hofstra 61-56 at the Arena at Harbor Yard. It was the fourth straight loss for the Stags, who are playing with basically seven players after losing three starters -- Warren Edney and Anthony Johnson to season-ending injuries and Greg Nero with back soreness. As usual, Fairfield played its tail off and never quit. The game came down to one or two plays. Hofstra made them. The Stags didn't.
Here's what Ed Cooley had to say in his post-game press conference:
(opening statement)
“I think we had another solid effort. I don’t think we were too smart coming down the stretch at all … turnovers will kill you. I just hope we get enough love when I get on the road next year … questions? (are you talking about the officials?) Take it however you want, I just hope I get a lot of love when I go on the road.”
(were the kids tired?)
“They were not tried, no way. Those kids, they could still be playing right now. We could play another 40 minutes right now. The game was played exactly how we wanted it to be played. We turned the ball over. You guys saw it, three possessions, four possessions. Turnovers will absolutely kill you. Give them credit, they’re a good team and they capitalized on it. I don’t want to take anything away from them, but I feel we hand-delivered that game to them in the final three minutes of that game.”
(playing a zone defense?)
“When you’ve been in the situation we’ve been in the last four weeks, as a coaching staff, you’ve got to do whatever you can to prepare your kids to give them confidence, energy and a game plan. And this is the second game in a row where I thought we’ve executed it to perfection other than the last couple of minutes of the game. That could be … we’ve got a lot of young guys on the floor that haven’t been in that situation. It could be a confidence thing, it could be a play-calling thing. But we’re going to do whatever we have to do to make sure we give our kids a chance to win the game.”
After finishing that statement, Cooley's emotions kept flowing …
“If there’s one team in the country that can go through what we’ve gone through and give the effort that our young men have been giving the last four weeks … I want to go to his coaching clincs. I’ll buy his DVD’s. I’ll go to his house and clean his house for the information. I don’t even know if the people here at Fairfield, our fans, understand what these young men have gone through. And to have a game like that slip though your hands, it’s hard, it’s really hard, when these kids, I mean, they played their (blanks) off today. Totally had the other team frustrated and now, we’ve got to pick our heads up. It’s tough. I wanted this game for our kids, I wanted this game for our program and we weren’t fortunate. But we’re not going to put our heads down, we’ll keep the grind going, smile and keep it moving. This was a very, very tough loss for our kids and it’s going to be my job to keep their confidence high. This is one of those games where your kids can beat themselves up and we can’t afford that right now.
(Why he didn’t play Crawford or Grzeck?)
“I think it’s a gut feeling like when you get ready to write a story, you got a lot of information, you’re going to keep some things out and add some things in. Today, my story was, play these guys, I had a good feeling. If I can add them in my next story, I’ll make I put them in.”
Herbie Allen
“We played to our game plan. We wanted to slow the game down, take time off the shot clock, take good shots, quality shots, change up our defense. We played a good 37 minutes. The last three minutes we turned the ball over and didn’t execute. I don’t know, this is a tough loss for me. I don’t care if it’s a moral victory, we’ve already proved that we can compete with anybody. We’re a good team. We shouldn’t have let this game get by. We had this game in hand. We had our plays, we just didn’t execute, we turned the ball over. We didn’t do our job the last three minutes.
Yorel Hawkins
“We played the game exactly the way we wanted it to be played, wanted to keep it the high 50’s, low 60’s, the last three minutes it was just mental mistakes. Like coach said, we weren’t tired, it was just mistakes on our behalf. It wasn’t anything Hofstra did, it was Fairfield mistakes and it bit us.”
At least Hofstra coach Tom Pecora showed the Stags a little love.
(on Fairfield)
“They play a style that will keep them in games. They’re a dangerous team. They shoot the ball very well and they were very well prepared for everything that we did.
Obviously, they’ve been snake-bit with injuries, so it’s been a difficult year for them. But their style of play is perfect when you’re banged up. They do a great job with the zone, they run great stuff …I’m going to steal that zone cut, I told my coaches that was something we have to run. I think the future is bright here.”
(continuing the series after next year?)
“I’d like to do that. We talked about trying to do that this year. We had an open date, they were looking for a game but our date didn’t work. We actually ended up being the two teams that flip-flopped, we went to Charelston and played them and they went to Puerto Rico. Originally, we were supposed to go to Puerto Rico and that got flip-flopped but then the date we had open was the week they were in Puerto Rico, so we would have played each other, so maybe in the future we can do that.”
Posted by celsberry on 10:48 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 18, 2009
Chaz and AJ ... in the VERY early morning
It's never any fun when the alarm goes off at 5:45 in the morning but I had to get up early today to make my major radio station debut, hanging in the studio with "Chaz and AJ in the morning" on WPLR-FM. That's right, baby, I finally made the big time.
I had been on WICC-AM before (not lately though) with "Bobby and the Bird, Sports Talk in Black & White" with Matt Levine on "The Final Score" on WSTC-AM and on the Fairfield University campus station, but going on PLR? And on morning drive, no less? After 25 years at the Post, I'd finally arrived.
I was scheduled to be on between 7 and 8 a.m. and I arrived (coffee in hand) around 6:45. John, the show's producer, met me at the door and brought me to the studio, where ... I waited in the lobby. No problem. I finished my coffee. Billy Winn came out to get me and lead me back to the main studio where, he and Chaz do their thing. AJ and Megan Doll were in different booths and I never got to see either of them (boo!).
During the hour, we talked a lot about A-Rod and the act that he put on for the media regarding his steroid admission -- with Chaz playing a tape that kept highlighting Rodriguez's use of the word "stupid." Funny stuff. We took some calls, talked about some other baseball things and ... all done! Time to go. Wish I could have seen Megan and AJ but, next time.
Maybe next time I'll even get a bumper sticker.
Posted by celsberry on 3:24 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2009
Did you believe A-Rod?
Did you believe him or didn’t you?
Alex Rodriguez threw himself on the mercy of the media Tuesday afternoon in Tampa, trying to set the record straight regarding his use of illegal substances in 2001, 2002 and 2003, saying over and over again that he was “young,” that he was “stupid” and that he “screwed up big time.”
But did he tell the truth?
That, we will never know. Rodriguez might have tried to set the record straight in the wake of his admission to the media masses but he didn’t do a very good job. From the moment he read that prepared statement (which it looked like he’d never even seen before he read it) to “choking up” when he thanked his teammates, you have to wonder just how honest and sincere Rodriguez was being.
We found out that between 2001-03, Rodriguez and his cousin (“his name is not important”, A-Rod said, WHAT?) injected themselves twice a month with some kind of over the counter drug obtained in the Dominican Republic. He said that he didn’t really know if they were injecting it right, he wasn’t sure if it worked at all and he did it because he was “young and curious.”
“I’m not sure what the benefit was,” he said. “I certainly felt more energy but it’s hard to say,”
If you weren’t sure that the drug worked, why continue to take it for THREE YEARS?
“I was young,” said A-Rod.
Over the course of the 40-minute press conference, Rodriguez answered some questions, but not all. A lot of his responses involved statements like:
“When you’re young and stupid, you’re young and stupid.”
“I was immature. I was stupid.”
“It was a stupid mistake …a lesson learned.”
“I screwed up, big time.”
Rodriguez said toward the end of his press conference that he hoped this steroid issue would just go away so he can concentrate on playing baseball. That’s not happening. Questions will keep coming – and they should – on why he continued to take the drug even when he wasn’t sure what it was going, on why he didn’t bother to do any of research on the drug he was taking and, most importantly, who is cousin is.
“I thought I knew everything, A-Rod said. “And I clearly didn’t.”
In the end, after first lying and then denying and then vilifying a reporter, A-Rod finally came clean with one statement.
“I kept looking for someone to blame and in the end, all the only one I could blame was myself,” he said.
Now that was the truth.
Posted by celsberry on 3:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
