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“It’d be nice to get that win on Senior Night, but it didn’t work out,” Fairfield coach Jeff Sims. “It didn’t always work out for this class, but they like to be together.”
Senior guard Darweshi Hunter, who ranked second in the GMC in scoring going into the game with an 18.0 average, and 6-foot-6 guard-forward Aaron Ward each scored 15 points to lead the Vikings. Syracuse-bound 6-9 senior Darius Bazley scored just four points while sitting out the second half.
Junior guard Peyton Brown came off the bench to lead the Indians with nine points. They trailed by as many as 30 points before putting together a late surge to avoid what would have been their worst loss of the season.
Princeton (19-3, 16-0 GMC) joins Mason in the 2015-2016 season as 16-0 GMC champions. The Vikings have won the last four games in its series with Fairfield, including 60-35 at Princeton on Jan. 5.
“It’s hard to go undefeated,” he added, indicating his respect for Princeton’s accomplishment.
Fairfield (7-15, 5-11 GMC), which has lost four straight games after winning two in a row and is seeded 18th in the Division I district tournament, is scheduled to face 16th-seeded Northwest in the first round on Feb. 24 at Lakota West. Tipoff is scheduled for 5 p.m. The Knights, the Southwest Ohio Conference champions, beat the Indians, 58-44, at Northwest on Dec. 5 in the second game of the season.
“We’re 0-0,” Sims said. “It’s just a matter of how long they want to keep playing – of whether they want to play for a while. We’re confident enough that we can win our first game. We’ll take five days and look at Northwest.
Princeton, deploying a 1-2-2 halfcourt trapping defense, forced Fairfield into seven first-quarter turnovers, four during a 13-0 run that left the Vikings leading, 13-2, less than halfway into the quarter. Isaiah Kennedy sank two of Princeton’s four 3-pointers in the quarter which ended with Vikings leading, 19-7.
The Indians took better care of the ball in the second quarter, committing just five turnovers, but the Viking still were able to build on their lead, expanding it to as many as 23 points before settling for a 38-16 halftime lead. Bazley gave the Vikings a 30-10 lead on an alley-oop dunk with 5:14 left in the half.
Princeton, which is scheduled to open tournament play as the second seed against No. 29 Kings on Thursday at 8 p.m. at Lakota West, rested most of its starters after halftime. The third quarter was even until Ward’s dunk in the final seconds gave Princeton its largest lead to that point, 56-32.
“It’s hard to replicate what they do,” Sims said. “It’s hard to replicate 6-9, 6-8 (Princeton senior Gabriel O’Neal). We don’t shoot well enough. We had to score at the rim, and that’s hard to do against 6-9 and 6-8. Our plan was to play a bunch of zone, shoot over them, rebound the misses, but the zone won’t work if they’re making shots, and they hit those 3s.”
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