Basketball season is now just over a month away, and the hype is growing as Fairfield is heavily featured in the recently announced Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) Preseason Poll.
Fresh off back-to-back conference titles, Stags women’s basketball is the unanimous favorite to make it three in a row, receiving all 13 first-place votes in the Preseason Coaches’ Poll.
“We are excited about the group we have in our locker room this upcoming season,” head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis told Fairfieldstags.com. “We were able to not only retain everyone on our roster who played a minute last year with remaining eligibility, but we have recruited high-level talent that adds to our depth and versatility.”
In accordance with their lofty team expectations, one-third of the roster for the Stags was featured in the Preseason All-Conference teams.
Sophomore road runner Cyanne Coe and graduate Penn State transfer Alli Campbell were both named to the All-MAAC Third Team. Coe returns after a promising first season where she shot a team-best 68.2 percent from the field and was named to the MAAC All-Rookie Team.
Campbell spent the last three years with the Nittany Lions, starting 23 games last season. She averaged 8.1 points per game and 4.1 rebounds per game, while her assist average of 4.4 ranked fifth in the Big Ten.
Junior guard Kaety L’Amoreaux and graduate guard Janelle Brown received All-MAAC First Team honors. After bursting onto the scene two years ago as a freshman, L’Amoreaux elevated her game a step further as a sophomore, recording career-high averages in points (12.4), rebounds (4.7), and assists (4.3) en route to earning All-MAAC and All-Met Second Team distinctions.
“I’m obviously very honored because the MAAC is a very competitive conference, and it’s something that I very much take pride in,” L’Amoreaux said of being named to the Preseason First Team, “but at the end of the day, none of the polls mean anything until the season’s over.”
Brown, the 2023-24 Conference Player of the Year, will be making her return to the court for a sixth season after an ACL injury caused her to miss all but nine games last year. In her last full season, Brown averaged 13.8 points and 3.6 assists per game, while posting a 57 percent shooting mark from the field, the best in the country among guards.
Finally, junior road runner Meghan Andersen was named the unanimous Preseason Conference Player of the Year, on top of being the only player to be unanimously chosen for the All-MAAC First Team. Andersen was a first-team selection in both of her first two seasons with the Stags, and last year, she led the squad in scoring with 14.8 points per game. She also tallied 4.1 rebounds and a team-leading 1.3 blocks.
On the men’s side, the Stags finished eighth out of 13 teams in the Preseason Coaches’ Poll, with a total of 74 points. Their lone all-conference honoree is graduate transfer guard Deuce Turner, who was named to the All-MAAC Third Team.
Turner spent last season with UC Santa Barbara, where he averaged 9.6 points off the bench. The two years prior, Turner was a member of the San Diego Toreros, where he averaged 11.2 points across 61 total games. During the 2023-24 season, he was named the West Coast Conference (WCC) Sixth Man of the Year and was a member of the All-WCC Second Team.
The start of the season is now just five weeks away, and both the men’s and women’s teams will continue to prepare for their opening road trips to Penn State and Villanova with the added excitement and weight of preseason expectations.