Fairfield 73 Manhattan 70 It was fitting that Manhattan’s mistake-filled, foul-plagued loss to Fairfield ended with a blown layup and a missed 3-pointer. A game this ugly couldn’t have ended any other way.
It was a sloppy game, a warped variant of the sport Naismith invented. To say the Stags’ 73-70 win set basketball back 20 years would be insulting to the players of the ’70s.
Yes, there was some offense last night that wasn’t downright offensive. Manhattan forward Ken Kavanagh had 24 points and a dozen rebounds, and the Stags’ bullish center Darren Phillip responded with 27 points and 11 boards.
But in the end it was Jasper guard Phil “Boo” Lane who missed a driving layup with 26 seconds left that could’ve tied the game at 72. And it was backcourtmate Mars Mellish that was harassed into an airball on his last-ditch 3-point attempt just before the buzzer sounded on Manhattan’s sixth straight loss.
The best thing about this game that featured 56 fouls and 39 percent shooting? Only 1,095 fans showed up at Draddy Gym to see it.
Manhattan fell to 3-14, just 1-8 in the MAAC. Fairfield improved to 11-7 and 6-5 by matching Manhattan’s league-leading defense stop for stop and rebound for rebound, until its own offense finally warmed up with a 17-5 run midway through the second half.
“When you play aggressive, there’s gonna be runs,” said Fairfield coach Tim O’Toole. “You just hope you run more than you get run upon.”
They did just that after intermission. A Stag team that had nine turnovers in the first half had only three in the second. A Fairfield squad that shoots 54 percent from the stripe and just 50 in the first half last night hit 84.2 percent in the second including 12 straight at one point. And Phillip sparked a 17-5 run that helped turn a 39-32 second-half deficit into a 49-44 lead the Stags would never surrender.
“Coach kept putting his hands together, telling us to stay together. Teams are gonna make runs; that’s the game of basketball,” Phillip said. “If we stay together, we can beat teams. If we don’t, we’ll get crushed.”
It was the Jaspers, and their hopes of breaking their slump that Phillip crushed.
“He doesn’t just go get position. He throws you, he bangs you,” Kavanagh said of Phillip. “He takes his position, and your position right from you. He throws his butt into you and puts his arm up. He’s a solid post player. He’s like the Tazmanian Devil on the blocks.”
Kavanagh, Manhattan’s leading scorer (15.8) and rebounder (9.0) came off the bench for the second straight game as punishment for being late to a meeting. He spent the first 3:31 of the game being disciplined, and who knows what that 3:31 cost the Jaspers?
He had six points in his first 1:27 on the floor, and had a conventional three-point play that put Manhattan ahead 14-8. But the Jaspers had five turnovers and four missed shots to let the Stags come right back and knot the score at 14. From there, the first half was a back-and-forth affair of ugly and uglier.
There were back-to-back missed layups by Justin Boeker, a free-throw airball from the Jaspers’ Kyle Dye, and a 27-27 tie at the break.
A 10-3 run early in the second half put the Jaspers ahead 39-32. But Fairfield’s blue-chip freshman Jermaine Clark in the midst of a 4-for-19 night rattled home a 3-pointer to staunch the bleeding and start the Stags’ pivotal run. They climbed back to tie at 39 on a Phillips’ layup, and there were ties at 42 and 44.
But Fairfield’s Chris Rivers broke that tie with a pair of free throws at 11:07 left and Andy Buzbee followed with a 3-pointer to make the score 49-44. The Stags would never trail again.