Haililani Pokipala wins MAAC Offensive Player of the Week

Fairfield University outside hitter Haililani Pokipala has won the MAAC Offensive Player of the Week. For the full story click here. In the weekend she had 21 kills and 19 digs. She also recorded a double double in the win against St. Peters a win that snapped the team's three match losing streak. For the season, the Hawaiian native leads the team in kills per set and is second in digs per set.

She really had a great weekend, but is this the same confident team? In the video posted on fairfieldstags.com, Pokipala says that the goal on the team in the beginning of the year was to obviously win a MAAC Championship, but now she says the goal is to stay focused in practice and hopefully it will translate to a win. I have never seen a team lose so much confidance. When the time gets tough, the good and winning teams will persevere and win that game and win the crown. The team has gone to the MAAC tournament as the top seed every year since 2001 and has not won one championship. Is this a strong enough team to come back from difficulties and win one without the best talent?

Syracuse 3 Fairfield 1

The Syracuse Orange (1-0) defeated the Fairfield Stags (0-2) by two sets in the nightcap of the Colgate Classic. The Stags are now 0-2 all time aganist the Big East foe. For the full boxscore click here. For a recap click here.

Much better game for the Stags only committing 24 errors. Pokipala who hit 11 errors in the first game only misfired on 6 shots tonight. While having 14 kills.

Brianna Dixion once again led the team in kills with 15 for the second straight game. She did committ 6 errors, but this is what Fairfield needs from the sophomore.

Rachel Romansky looks like the real deal! She had 39 assists and 4 kills which gives her 10 kills and 66 assists through the first 2 games. Lauren Balmert, the setter it looks like she is replacing, only had 69 kills and 20 errors last year. Romansky only has 1 error!

Here is what I am afraid of. Alex Lopez is yet to have a kill since returning from injury that sidelined her all of last year. Hopefully she can get things going again. The Stags are going to need her.

Fairfield will play tomorrow night at 7 pm aganist the host Colgate.

Rhode Island 3 Fairfield 1

The Fairfield Stags (0-1) were defeated by the Rhode Island Rams (1-0) 3 sets to one in the opening game of the Colgate Classic. For the complete box score click here. The Stags are now 1-3 all-time aganist the Rams and 15-11 in season openers.

The Stags were absolutely dominated in the first set to put it very nicely. They were down as much as 10 when the score was 17-7. Romansky was the only Stag to play well with 2 kills and 3 assists without an error. Fellow freshmen Hayley Moyer had 3 errors in 3 attempts and as a team the Stags had 9 total.

Fairfield lost the fourth set 25-6! committing 9 errors and having about a 15 point losing streak. That is only the second time in 2 years the Stags could not score into the double digits in a set over the past two years. The other came September 5th against #7 Michigan where they only scored 9.

The only set they won came in the third set where they edged the Rams 25-23.

The Stags committed 32 errors in the afternoon game! Compared to Rhode Island's 12. Pokipala led the team with 11 of those errors followed by freshmen Hayley Moyer with 6. The Hawaii native had 129 errors last year the second worst on the team.

There were some good points. Brianna Dixion led the team with 15 kills (the 21st time in her career she finished with 10 or more) but the most important is that she only had 1 error!

Freshmen Rachel Romansky filled up the column today. She had 7 kills 25 assists and 7 digs!

The Stags will next play tonight at 7pm aganist the Syracuse Orange