One For The Road
The Niagara Purple Eagles wrap up their first road trip of the MAAC season with Tuesday's 2:00 p.m. matchup against the Fairfield Stags at Alumni Hall.
    
While coming off of Sunday's loss to Quinnipiac, Niagara (2-8, 0-1 MAAC) will look to build on the positives that came out of the team's impressive 21-6 run that started the second half.  Senior guard Chanel Johnson scored 10 points over the nearly eight-minute span while Kelly Van Leeuwen and Victoria Rampado both added four.  In the back court, NU stifled the Bobcats, keeping them to a 2-for-13 clip from the floor.
    
The Stags (6-4, 1-0 MAAC) are coming off of a 67-61 win over the Rider Broncs.  Senior Katie Cizynski scored 16 points and collected 12 rebounds for her second double-double of the season.  Felicia DaCruz added 14 points and Alexys Vazquez scored 13 points to give Fairfield three players in the double digits. 
    
Cizynski leads the team with 14.4 ppg and with 6.9 rpg.  Vazquez is second with 11.4 ppg and Brittany Obi-Tabot narrowly misses the double digit club with 9.9 ppg so far this season.  Fairfield is 1-2 at home this season. The Stags dropped their first two games at Alumni Hall before winning the last game against Rider.  They have yet to score over 67 points at home while NU's best offensive showing on the road came in Sunday's 61-point performance. 
    
The last time these teams went head-to-head was at the tail-end of last season in a 50-39 Niagara win.  The game was the first of a three-game homestand that wound down the season for the Purple Eagles.  The 39 points were the fewest amount of points the Purple Eagles gave up all season.  They kept the Stags to just 34.0 percent (16-for-47) from the floor including an 0-8 showing from beyond the arc in the second half, while holding all Fairfield scores to under 10 points.  The Purple and White had two players score in the double digits including Meghan McGuinness who pocketed 12 points (5-for-11 from the floor) and pulled in seven rebounds.  NU finished the game with a 37-30 rebounding margin.
 
How To Tune In
•    Purple Eagle fans can follow all of Sunday's action via PurpleEagles.com.
 
Against the Stags (Fairfield leads 33-18)
•   The Purple Eagles broke a six-game losing streak with last season's victory.  Before that, the last Niagara victory came on January 16, 2010 when it won 52-49 on the road.
 
Snapping The Skid
•  Last season's 50-39 win over the Stags broke a six-game losing streak against Fairfield.
•  Four of the six losses were by a single-digit margin.
•  The last NU win over Fairfield before the streak came in a road game played in the Webster Bank Arena on Bridgeport, Conn. on Jan. 16, 2010.  The Purple Eagles won by three, 52-49.
 
Auld Lang Syne
•  Tuesday's game will be the final game of the 2013 calendar year for the Purple Eagles, which should be fairly obvious since it comes on the literal last day of the year.
•  Since the 2000-01 season, Niagara is 5-8 in the final game of the calendar year.
•  The last time the team played on December 31 was back in 2005 in an 80-56 loss to Vermont.  It was the second of two back-to-back years where the team played on New Year's Eve, the first game was in 2004 when the team beat Army 55-52 on the road.
 
Consistency
•  Chanel Johnson has scored in the double digits in her last two contests with 12 points against Buffalo (12/21) and 19 against Quinnipiac (12/29). 
•  Johnson scored over 10 points in the two games prior to Thursday's the Dec. 19 matchup Syracuse.  The last time she scored in the double-digits in two consecutive games was early last season when she scored 14 against Bowling Green (11/15/12) followed by a 12-point performance against Bucknell (11/21/12).
•  With her 19 points against Quinnipiac, she has hit double digits in four of her last five games.
•  The senior's longest double-digit scoring streak was as a freshman in the 2010-11 season when she scored over 10 points in four consecutive games. 
 
Are You Ready
•  This game will be the second game in a two-game road-trip to start the MAAC the season for the Purple Eagles.
•  The last time the Purple Eagles opened up the conference schedule on the road was on 1/2/12 with a 57-54 win over the Loyola Greyhounds (who have since left the conference).

Fireworks
•  Val McQuade's 31-point night against Buffalo (12/21) made her the first Purple Eagle to score over 30 points in a game since 2006.
•  Her 6-for-10 showing from beyond the three-point line made her the second NU player to hit six three's in a game this season.  The first was Meg McGuinness, who hit seven against Lehigh (11/8).
•  Three more three pointers would have made her the first NU player to hit at least nine three pointers and score at least 40 points in a game since Kim Kuhn did both against Holy Cross on Feb. 24, 1990.
 
Looking For A Place To Happen
•  The Purple Eagles enter the MAAC schedule looking for their first road win of the season.
•  They will have a chance to get into the win column right away as they start with a pair of games on the road.  They dropped the first game against the Quinnipiac Bobcats but still have yet to face the Fairfield Stags.