January 31, 2025
Inside the preparations for, and takeaways from, Quinnipiac-Fairfield
By Ben Yeargin
Carly Thibault-DuDonis: '[Grit] is what this team has always hung our hat on'
The calm before the storm
The Quinnipiac women’s basketball team stood in a crescent moon shape around the key on Wednesday morning. It was the end of practice, a shorter one than typical. One by one, each player went up and shot a free throw. The only one who missed was senior guard Jackie Grisdale. Head coach Tricia Fabbri then walked to the middle of the semicircle and gave some parting words.
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The team broke after Fabbri’s message to lift or go to class, and freshman guard Gal Raviv and Grisdale were talking about getting ice cream at local favorite Wentworth’s. For that moment, they were just two college students making plans.
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A day later and 35 miles down the road, the Fairfield Stags were doing the last of their preparations. Stags head coach Carly Thibault-DuDonis was in the middle of it all, either rebounding for her players or softly guarding graduate guard Izabela Nicoletti Leite or senior road runner Emina Selimovic while they shot 3-pointers.
The entire Fairfield squad was relaxed but precise in its movements. Whether it was shooting threes, practicing their offensive plays or in their motions, the Stags knew where they had to be, or they would pay.
“Quinnipiac is a very good team, and they’re better than they were last year,” Selimovic told The Next.
“Some of the mistakes that we’ve made, some of the things we’ve probably gotten away with in other games, Quinnipiac will make you pay for those,” Thibault-DuDonis said.
They practiced their matchups, having senior road runner Lauren Beach or freshman road runner Cyanne Coe on freshman guard Keyarah Gregory, who was mimicking Raviv’s role in the Bobcats’ offense.
At the end of Fairfield’s shootaround, the players shot their customary half-court heaves, with only sophomore road runner Meghan Andersen and graduate road runner Raiana Brown making them.
Then everyone slowly filed off the court, getting ready for the most publicized game either team has played this season. Quinnipiac and Fairfield are the current No. 2 and No. 1 seeds in the MAAC.
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Fairfield hasn’t lost a MAAC game since 2023, when it fell to Siena in the MAAC Tournament. Quinnipiac is the best bet to break that streak this year, and the Stags knew it.
“I’m so excited,” Raviv told The Next. “We know they’re going to be good, and [we] just [have] to come ready to play.”
Could the Bobcats beat Fairfield on Thursday and cement themselves in the MAAC title conversation, or would Fairfield continue to dominate the conference?
Takeaways from Fairfield’s win
Gal Raviv is that good
Gal Raviv’s skill has already been established in MAAC circles. The Kadima, Israel, native has won seven MAAC Rookie of the Week awards and ranks fourth in the conference in scoring at 16.6 points per game.
But against the Stags and in front of a broader audience, she stepped it up. In the Bobcats’ only conference loss to Mount St. Mary’s this year, she’d had 14 points on 5-for-20 shooting. In the first half against Fairfield, she had 12 on 6-for-7 shooting, cooking whoever the Stags put on her.
Fairfield resorted to putting Coe, Beach and sophomore road runner Jillian Huerter on Raviv, but that was no problem for Raviv. She created separation with a stepback jumper and floated freely through the Stags’ defense, dishing out four assists to pair with her points.
“She’s going to be a problem for a lot of years,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “She’s special because she can clearly create her own shots.”
The Stags switched sophomore guard Kaety L’Amoreaux onto Raviv in the second half, and Raviv finished the game with 21 points on 10-for-17 shooting from the field.
Raviv led the Bobcats in scoring, but it wasn’t enough for the win.
“She was a one-woman wrecking crew,” Fabbri said postgame. “She was great out there tonight.”
Never doubt Fairfield’s three
Fairfield’s lifeblood is the 3-pointer. The Stags have shot the most threes in the league by a country mile and have the third-best shooting percentage in the league.
Fairfield managed to hit its threes at the best times, keeping Quinnipiac just out of reach of taking the lead.
For example, Raviv hit a layup in the first quarter to cut the Stags’ lead to just 2 points, but then Huerter drilled a three. Again in the third quarter, Raviv brought the Bobcats within 4, but then Fairfield senior guard Kendall McGruder extended the lead back to 7.
“[Grit] is what this team has always hung our hat on,” Thibault-DuDonis said. “It’s not about any one individual.”
In the game, the Stags shot 12-for-24 from beyond the arc, with McGruder and Nicoletti Leite each knocking down three. Nicoletti Leite was in the gym before shootaround practicing her craft, and it paid off massively during the game.
“I’ve been in the gym a lot, especially with Coach Carly these past two weeks,” Nicoletti Leite said. “When I do get the open shot, just take the shot.”
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How did Quinnipiac deal with adversity?
Just playing a team that’s undefeated in conference play brings adversity. But throughout the game, the Stags gave the Bobcats a mountain’s worth of it.
Fairfield jumped out to a 10-0 lead with threes from L’Amoreaux and McGruder, a bucket from Coe, and free throws from Andersen. Quinnipiac responded with two words.
“Ella O’Donnell,” Fabbri said.
The junior forward scored 6 points right in the mouth of the Fairfield defense to bring the Bobcats within 4 points.
Later in the game, O’Donnell and sophomore forward Anna Foley got into foul trouble. Foley received her fourth foul on a controversial entanglement at center court where she was charged with an offensive foul.
“We need her on the floor,” Fabbri said. “She creates so much offense for us. It definitely made it a bit more challenging.”
Quinnipiac tried to manage Foley’s fouls by keeping LaBarge and O’Donnell on the floor and subbing in the Andover, Massachusetts, native sporadically throughout the fourth. Foley only played two minutes in the final frame.
Stags depth
If you’d told Fabbri before the game that the Bobcats would limit Andersen to 4 points, L’Amoreaux to 11 and Selimovic to 9, she would have taken that any day of the week.
But the result was still a Stags win because the depth stepped up.
Coe scored 13 points on 6-for-6 shooting from the field. Coe leads the Stags and ranks second in the country with her 71.3% field goal percentage this season.
“Our game plan was to come out from the start,” Coe said. “I just had a lot of confidence going into today’s game.”
Additionally, McGruder co-led the team in scoring with Coe on 3-for-5 shooting from 3-point range, and Huerter scored 6 points on two 3-pointers.
Andersen, L’Amoreaux and Selimovic will continue to produce for Fairfield, but when that trio — or even one of them — is shut down, look to the bench to step up.
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After the storm
It’s quiet postgame. The only people around Leo D. Mahoney Arena are custodians, media, and some lingering Fairfield fans and staff.
The only evidence of the duel that just took place is the second-deck scoreboard, which reads, “Fairfield 72, Quinnipiac 63.”
This won’t be the last time the two squads play each other this year; they’ll match up again at M&T Bank Arena in Hamden, Connecticut, on March 6. And they could play again in the MAAC Championship in Atlantic City.
But Round 1 went to the Fairfield Stags.
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