SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Derek Needham didn’t want his career to end on Friday night. A classmate felt the same way and a teammate at the opposite end of the experience spectrum helped him out, and in turn they helped Fairfield move on with a 54-47 win over St. Peter’s.
Needham isn’t the only senior on Fairfield, as fellow guards Colin Nickerson and Desmond Wade are also coming up on the end of their college careers. But he’s the big name on the team, the program’s third all-time leading scorer, the guy who has been an impact player from the minute he arrived on campus and scored in double figures in all but one game of his freshman campaign. He’s the charismatic young man who is well-known around the campus and not just because he’s a basketball player. He’s the star guard who didn’t play in the conference tournament last year due to a broken foot.
And on Friday night, he was driven to keep his team alive, even if there were some anxious moments near the end. Needham joined the parade of Stags missing free throws late, but he did make his second one after a key rebound to help them seal the victory and move on.
“I don’t want to go home yet,” said Needham, who scored a game-high 24 points. “That was the whole theme talking to Colin in the hotel, we don’t want to go home. I think we showed it tonight. Colin played great, and he inspired us to hustle even harder.”
The Stags’ win was hardly a thing of beauty. They shot below 39 percent from the field and were just 4-16 from long range. The Peacocks shot 42.6 percent, including 3-8 from long range, and had one less turnover. The Stags were also 12-22 from the foul line, missing seven free throws in the final minute to prolong the game. It almost sounds like a game they lost, but the big differences were that they got to the line more – though they almost gave it away there – and had a big 39-23 edge on the glass.
They also came through when it mattered most – at gut-check time. St. Peter’s gradually gained momentum, especially in the second half, and led by seven with 11:39 left on a three-pointer by Desi Washington. The rest of the way, the Peacocks would score just three points.
“The guys are just committed to (defense),” said head coach Sydney Johnson. “They work tremendously hard in practice.”
Nickerson scored just four points, but he filled the stat sheet with six rebounds, two assists with no turnovers and three steals. He was active all night long and did more than the numbers along would suggest, as Needham alluded to. At the other end of the experience scale, freshman Amadou Sidibe grabbed 13 rebounds, including a key one at the offensive end that he stuck back with 52 seconds left to make it a two-possession game.
It’s been an uneven season for Fairfield, which might have been expected given their personnel. They have had three streaks of winning or losing five straight games. After the three seniors, they have two juniors and a host of freshmen. The freshmen have talent but have had an adjustment period to the college game that was to be expected. Sidibe leads then in rebounding and Marcus Gilbert has become a complementary scorer, but the others haven’t distinguished themselves just yet.
Fairfield will take on Rider on Saturday evening in the quarterfinals. The Stags will surely come in with some confidence since they beat Rider in both meetings during the regular season. But they also know that the tournament is different. They will need a better effort than some of Friday night combined with the intangibles they showed to rally from the second-half deficit to keep alive the careers of Needham and his classmates for at least one more day.
