Savage with 21 points leads Merrimack past Fairfield

NORTH ANDOVER — Devon Savage finished with 21 points — all scored off 3-pointers — to lead Merrimack past Fairfield 67-54 in the MAAC home opener on Friday afternoon.

“Start to finish, that was one of our best, complete-game performances,” said Merrimack coach Joe Gallo.

“We’ve all seen [Savage] do that before. The roster was built to surround Budd with a lot of shooters. We didn’t look that way early on, but if you take out some of the Rutgers, VCU, Butler games, we’re 38 percent from three. When you have Budd, who is in my eyes the best player in the league, the defense we have, and if we hit shots the way we have, we can be hard to beat.”

Budd Clark finished with 18 points, and Bryan Etumnu had 10 points for the Warriors.

Defensively, the Warriors forced 15 turnovers against the Stags, who rank as one of the tougher teams in the nation to turn the ball over against.

“They don’t turn it over a lot,” Gallo said. “That’s seven extra possessions right there. A lot of them were off deflections. We had 40+ deflections in an otherwise low-possession game, which means our activity level was pretty high on defense.”

The Warriors are off until next Friday when they’ll travel to Sacred Heart.