BANGOR, Maine — The Stony Brook Seawolves are becoming the masters of the streak in America East men’s basketball circles.
The defending conference champions had scored the final 21 points of their Jan. 8 conference encounter with University at Albany for a stunning 72-70 victory over the Great Danes in their most recent outing.
While the scene wasn’t quite as desperate for coach Jeff Boals’ club at the Cross Insurance Center on Saturday afternoon, Stony Brook erupted for 23 unanswered points midway through the second half to pull away from the University of Maine 74-54.
The Seawolves improved to 8-8 overall, 3-0 in AE play while UMaine fell to 5-14, 1-3 after being outscored 46-23 during the game’s final 20 minutes.
“I thought we played really tough and hard in the first half,” said Black Bears coach Bob Walsh. “We certainly made some mistakes, but we were in control of the game with the way we played.
“Then in the second half when it’s time to win you have to handle another level of intensity and we couldn’t stand up to it today.”
UMaine tied the game at 42-42 when Wes Myers scored off a back-door bounce pass from Ilija Stojiljkovic with 14:41 to play, but the Black Bears’ offense then went silent for the next 9 minutes, 31 seconds, as Stony Brook broke the game open.
The Seawolves’ leading scorer, senior guard Lucas Woodhouse, scored 18 of his game-high 20 points after intermission, including back-to-back 3-pointers during that decisive run that pushed the Stony Brook advantage to 65-42 before Myers finally drove the lane for a three-point play with 5:10 left.
“His first couple of shots weren’t even close, but when Lucas is aggressive and scores we’re a really good basketball team,” said Boals.
Woodhouse also had seven assists and no turnovers, while junior forward Tydell Sturdivant scored 16 points — 12 in the first half — and grabbed six rebounds. Redshirt freshman forward Akwasi Yeboah added 13 points and six boards for the Seawolves.
Myers paced UMaine with 18 points on 8-of-17 shooting along with five assists, but Stony Brook made life difficult for the junior guard who had averaged 29.7 points per game in his first three America East outings.
“Our key was to keep him out of the lane but he’s shifty, a tough guard who gets in the lane when he wants to,” said Boals. “In the second half we implemented our press and went to a 2-3 zone just to try to keep him out of the lane and slow their offense down.”
Redshirt freshman center Vincent Eze added 12 points and 11 rebounds for UMaine, while junior guard Austin Howard scored nine points.
UMaine, still without freshman forward Andrew Fleming (day-to-day with an ankle injury) along with several other players sidelined for the season, used just seven players during the game’s first 37:35 after a similar scenario during Thursday’s last-second victory over UMass Lowell.
Stony Brook, meanwhile, had been idle since its win over UAlbany, and the well-rested Seawolves went 11 players deep against the Black Bears while the game was in doubt.
“Bob’s got a lot of kids banged up right now and he’s relying on some kids who are playing a lot more minutes than they normally would,” said Boals. “If you look at what they did against Lowell the other night they had three kids play 38 to 40 minutes and with the quick turnaround and having two games so close I thought that could be to our advantage.”
Walsh, for his part, was not interested in using comparative body counts and rest days as an excuse for his team’s second half, when UMaine shot just 8 of 21 from the field and 1 of 7 from 3-point land compared to 15 of 27 overall and 8 of 12 from beyond the arc for Stony Brook.
“We’re playing guys a lot of minutes,” said Walsh, whose team faces its third game in five days at Hartford on Monday afternoon. “Guys love to play a lot of minutes and we’ve prepared them to play a lot of minutes so I think that’s just an excuse.
“Our guys have to be mentally tougher and understand what’s coming, they have to be physically tougher so we can handle it, and I’ve got to prepare them better.”
