Spiders emphasize defensive lessons after 93-73 loss to Fairfield

The University of Richmond women’s basketball team fell 97-73 to Fairfield University on the afternoon of Dec. 7 at the Robins Center, a defeat defined by defensive breakdowns and a relentless Stags perimeter attack.

Fairfield hit 19 three-pointers, outscoring Richmond by 30 points from the arc, and built a 20-point halftime lead that the Spiders were never able to meaningfully chip away at. Richmond allowed 51 points in the first half, just four days after holding Loyola College to 10 in the same span.

Head coach Aaron Roussell didn’t mince words afterward.

“Obviously that was a tough one,” Roussell said. “Much of the differentials in games, especially with our games, are what’s the point differential at the arc. For us to go minus 30 points at the arc, I’d say that’s the story of the game.”

Roussell said he felt good about Richmond’s preparation and game plan in the two days leading in, but the Spiders failed to execute the defensive details they had emphasized.

“In the first three possessions, the two major things that we talked about both go wrong,” Roussell said. “It just can’t happen.”

Fairfield smelled blood immediately. Live-ball turnovers became layups. Overhelp on drives became open threes. Even contested shots fell for the Stags, who played with the urgency of a team coming off a Friday-night loss and remembering last year’s defeat to Richmond.

Junior guard Ally Sweeney, one of Richmond’s few stabilizing forces with 17 points, didn’t deflect responsibility.

“We’re just looking to find some momentum,” Sweeney said. “Clearly, they made a lot of shots. Our defense was not great at all. They were really good shooters. We knew that coming into this, and we did not actually buy into the scout and kind of show it off.”

Fairfield’s switching and gap pressure also disrupted Richmond’s typical spacing and passing rhythm.

“They’re switching a lot of stuff,” Sweeney said. “We should have ball-faked more, we should have run the offense better.”

Roussell echoed the players’ assessment, noting that guarding the arc was only part of the problem.

“We didn’t guard penetration very well at all,” he said. “When you have shooters out there and you’re also giving up stuff at the basket, that’s how you end up with a result like today.”

Richmond’s offense was never completely stagnant. The Spiders scored 32 points in the first half and 41 in the second, with senior forward Maggie Doogan finding her rhythm after halftime and finishing with a team-high 24 points.

Roussell noted that even with that scoring, the defensive gap was too large.

“We still have 32 points in the first half. If you told me that we were sitting at 32, I wouldn’t think that we were chasing 20 at halftime,” he said. “To come back out and score 41 points in the second half… if we just could have taken away a few of those [threes], guarded some of those a little bit more, again, you don’t ever think they’re going to make 19 of them.”

Richmond’s best defensive stretch came late in the third quarter and early in the fourth, when the Spiders finally strung together stops and rebounded more cleanly.

“I thought we started guarding penetration a little bit better,” Roussell said. “This team didn’t quit. I still saw some fire in our eyes in the second half.”

But with a deficit that hovered around 20 all afternoon, the effort was too late.

With finals week approaching and the nonconference schedule nearing its close, Roussell said the team cannot simply move on.

“This is not a throwaway-the-tape and just move on,” he said. “We’ve got to learn some things. We’ve got to get better. I need to get better. I need to take a look at some things that we’re teaching, that we’re doing.”

Sweeney echoed the need to absorb the loss rather than bury it.

“We have a lot of film from today and a lot of notes on what we need to work on,” she said. “Just not forgetting it, but learning from it, applying it to the next game, and then ultimately not living in the past.”

Fairfield exposed the Spiders’ weak spots. Richmond’s next step is confronting its defensive cracks. 

Richmond won’t have long to sit with Sunday’s loss. The Spiders travel to Liberty University on Dec. 13, then return home to Robins Center for an 11 a.m. Education Day game against Bethune-Cookman University on Dec. 16, presented by Chesapeake Bank.

Contact sports writer Farah Šertović at farah.sertovic@richmond.edu