Despite the top record in the conference, Quinnipiac gets snubbed at the annual Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference postseason awards show.
Again.
Fifty-nine conference victories (and possibly counting) in three years has yielded just one MAAC first team selection and zero Player of the Year awards for the Bobcats.
Of the 32 Division I conferences, twenty of them have released their all team selections. Of those 20, Quinnipiac is the only team to have won its conference outright and not had a player selected to the conference’s first team.
Quinnipiac has received minimal recognition for its players’ achievements on the court. In 2014, Samantha Guestella was named to the conference’s first team, Maria Napolitano was awarded the conference’s Sixth Player of the Year award and in 2015, Aryn McClure was named MAAC Rookie of the Year.
For some teams that might seem like enough praise, however head coach Tricia Fabbri doesn’t see it that way at all. Not for the amount of success the program has had.
“The wins matter more than everything. I mean we’re up here and we’re a team. We’re about winning and getting into the NCAA Tournament,” Fabbri said. “We are so tightly focused as a team but I am left scratching my head when I look at what we’ve been able to do in this conference. 54-6 (in the MAAC regular season the last three seasons). I’ve had one player on first team. I’m just scratching my head. That’s it. I mean that’s all I can say.”
Adily Martucci was awarded to the MAAC’s second team while Jen Fay and Aryn McClure placed on the third team.
Both Martucci and McClure were candidates for MAAC Defensive Player of the Year, however neither one winning the award is just another element of the process that left Fabbri scratching her head.
“I have a sense of disappointment for kids who really have a good year,” Fabbri said. “Like not only Adily defensively. I think Aryn McClure defensively stuffs a stat sheet and just because Adily obviously on-ball with what she did today with (Tamara) Miskovic but then you go back and see what Aryn does behind the zone. She’ll never get recognized. I think it was the same way with Maria (Napolitano) last year. What she (McClure) does, not as an on-ball defender she’ll never get recognized. That’s kind of tough.”
Although the Quinnipiac players want the recognition, at the end of the day they know the team is above all.
“Obviously we would have liked to see someone on the first team,” junior guard Carly Fabbri said. “A lot of our players are candidates for that team however it hasn’t gone that way for the past couple of years. At the end of the day, like Adily said, of course she should have gotten Defensive Player of the Year but what did we get at the ceremony today? We got a regular season championship. That’s a team thing and that’s what we wanted. We’re here in March and we want rings. It’s nice to get individual awards but we’re looking for that long term prize.”
However, the coach with 375 career wins still had more to say.
“I am left scratching my head is the best way to say it because in the end it doesn’t matter,” Fabbri said. “It’s about the team and what we want to do, but I’m also about looking at the talent because we’re not winning anything if I don’t have the right players putting on the right uniform and lacing up the right sneakers. So trust me I’ve had those days. So I’m left scratching my head because there is an easy recipe for success. It doesn’t add up if you’re looking at how all of this works and what we’re doing in the conference and who’s being rewarded for their efforts.”
If the Bobcats can get a win on Sunday in the semifinals against Iona, and then Monday in the conference championship and advance to the NCAA Tournament, then it won’t even matter. The Bobcats will get their rings that they have been waiting all year for.
To them, the other teams can have the individual awards.
