GAME NOTES: First-round action in the 34th annual Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament is set for Thursday at the Times Union Center, as the Fairfield Stags meet up with the Saint Peter's Peacocks.

The Stags are the 10th seed in this year's event after matching Marist for the worst MAAC record at 5-15. Fairfield has won just a single game since the middle of January, ironically enough it was a 57-43 romp over the Peacocks at home on Feb. 21. However, the Stags then lost two straight to close out the regular season, which ended with a narrow 57-56 defeat versus Niagara on the road last Sunday.

As for the seventh-seeded Peacocks, they managed to snap a late four-game slide with a 68-60 victory versus Iona last weekend, but as an 8-12 team in conference play they were still difficult to get a handle on.

From a historical perspective, Saint Peter's won this event back in 2011 with a 62-57 triumph over Iona, marking the program's third tournament title. The Stags were in the championship game as recently as 2012, but came out on the short end of a 48-44 final versus the now departed Loyola-Maryland Greyhounds. Like the Peacocks, Fairfield has also won it all three times, but the most recent was back in 1997 against Canisius (78-72).

The winner of this meeting will face second-seeded Rider in the quarterfinals of the tournament on Saturday afternoon.

As one of the weakest shooting teams in the nation, the Stags converted just 39.4 percent from the floor over the course of 30 regular-season outings, resulting in just 60.4 ppg. The leading scorer for the program was Marcus Gilbert with 16.5 ppg, with a good portion of his points coming at the free- throw line where he nailed 137-of-176 (.778). Tyler Nelson accounted for another 10.3 ppg as he attempted 147 of his 221 field goals from 3-point range where he hit on an impressive 42.9 percent of his tries to pace the program. Defensively, the Stags held foes to a competitive 65.9 ppg.

As for the Peacocks, their defense was tougher than that of Fairfield, giving up only 61.0 ppg, which ranked the program 49th in the nation heading into the week. Unfortunately, the offense came up with just 61.4 ppg, which didn't leave much room for error. Desi Washington and Marvin Dominique carried much of the load from a scoring standpoint as they poured in 14.2 and 14.1 ppg, respectively. The duo combined to knock down close to eight free throws per game for a unit that ranked 48th nationally with a total of 676 attempts at the charity stripe.

Assuming that Washington and Dominique are ready to come out and make a statement, the Peacocks should be in line for advancing into the weekend and not having their campaign come to an abrupt end.