Unanimous preseason conference favorites. The preseason conference Player of the Year. Three members of the preseason all-conference first team.
Those are just some of the accolades that have been heaped upon Fairfield women’s basketball and its players as the 2025-26 season approaches. But as the Stags look for a MAAC three-peat, they’re simply taking the recognition in stride and continuing to prioritize the process that has gotten them to such illustrious heights.
“We talk about our goals once or twice a year early in the year,” said head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis, “and then we kind of lay out a plan of what it’s gonna take to get there, and we really focus on the day-to-day.”
The Stags enter the new season in somewhat of a unique position. In a basketball landscape that has become dominated by NIL and the transfer portal, roster continuity has been a staple of the program over the last two years as they’ve built their legacy and dominance. Entering the 2024-25 season, the team returned over 90 percent of its scoring production from the previous year.
To some extent, that continuity is still intact. Every player who saw the floor last year and had remaining eligibility has returned for the Stags, including the aforementioned trio of conference first team honorees Meghan Andersen, Kaety L’Amoreaux and Janelle Brown.
But there is also undoubtedly a larger than usual void to fill. As Thibault-DuDonis describes it, her team is moving on from “some really big pieces”, including third-leading scorer Emina Selimovic and MAAC Sixth Player of the Year Raiana Brown, who were among the graduating class in the spring.
Even some of this year’s new additions joined the team under abnormal circumstances.
“We didn’t have a couple of our freshmen over the summer because they were playing with their national teams,” Thibault-DuDonis said, “which is awesome, but their learning curve becomes much more condensed getting here in September and they’re kind of drinking out of a fire hose.”
Those two players, Milou van Vliet and Selen Yusan from the Netherlands and Turkey respectively, join grad transfer Alli Campbell and returners like Andersen and Jill Huerter as flexible chess pieces meant to provide length and positional diversity to the Stags.
Among this year’s roster of 15 players, eight are between 6-foot and 6-foot-3.
“Those guys can really play two through four and give you a lot of versatility,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “You can have size across the board and have mismatches against other teams, and also a lot to play with defensively.”
Also joining the team are grad transfer Jalyn Sackrider, who projects to play at the five, as well as first-year guards Christina Pham and Keyarah Gregory, the latter of whom will make her on-court debut this season after enrolling early and redshirting last spring.
It’s a roster retool that figures to slightly swing the pendulum of the team’s identity.
“I think we’re deeper as far as people who can shoot the ball, who can play on the perimeter,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “And I think we’ve expanded our ability to be a defensive stopper team because of our length.”
One thing that has stayed the same this year for the Stags is their effort to schedule tough in the non-conference slate. The early stretch includes three teams nationally ranked in the preseason AP poll, including a matchup with No. 11 North Carolina at the WBCA Challenge multi-team event in Las Vegas.
Of their nine total non-conference games, six are against teams that either made the NCAA Tournament last year or are from a high major conference. Of those six, five will be away or neutral site games for the Stags.
“It’s definitely become harder to schedule,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “There’s fewer teams that want to come play at Mahoney Arena given the great home court advantage and the success that we’ve had. So we’ve adopted this mindset and philosophy that we’ll play anybody anywhere.”
Scheduling is also a crucial element of setting the Stags up for their ultimate goal of NCAA Tournament success. Earning a 12 seed or higher, much likelier for a team like Fairfield if they stack the slate with high-major teams, avoids the possibility of playing a true road game in the first round.
Leading that charge to March will be Andersen and L’Amoreaux as they enter their junior year. Beyond their MAAC first-team nods, both players were included on the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year Watchlist, and Andersen was named the unanimous Preseason Conference Player of the Year.
Janelle Brown, returning from an ACL tear for a sixth and final season with the Stags, was also named to the Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year Top 20, the only mid-major player to make the list.
“They’re all workers,” Thibault-DuDonis said of Brown, Andersen and L’Amoreaux. “I can’t say enough about their work ethic. It’s one thing to talk about their skill and their talent, but how they’ve all grown through their careers is what I’m most proud of.”
The success of those players, and the program at large, has earned more recognition than just awards. In September, it was announced that Fairfield is collaborating with production company Sport & Story to air a documentary-style special on ESPNU featuring the team. Filming has been ongoing throughout the fall, following the players not just on the court, but off the court as well.
“I think we’re staying true to Fairfield values, to our community, to our people in a changing world of college athletics that has become more transactional,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “The thing I’m most excited for is to show that to a national audience.”
No matter the context, it seems likely that the Stags won’t be going anywhere as the start of play approaches. For a team that has gone 59-7 in its last two seasons, winning has become not just an expectation, but a constant.
Now, they’re hoping that 2025-26 is the year they finally extend that constant through March and earn the program’s first ever NCAA Tournament win.
The Stags kick off their season next Wednesday, Nov. 5 as they go on the road to take on Villanova. Then, they return to Leo D. Mahoney Arena for the home opener against Lehigh on Saturday, Nov. 8.