The Stony Brook men’s basketball team fought and won a difficult game against the University of Binghamton Bearcats on Saturday afternoon, 78-69, and moved on in the 2012 America East Championship tournament.
Stony Brook (21-8) featured five players who scored double-digits in the game. Sophomore guard Dave Coley and junior forward Tommy Brenton (who also had 11 rebounds, five steals and three assists) each scored 14 points. Sophomore guard Anthony Jackson, senior guard Bryan Dougher and senior forward Dallis Joyner each scored 13 points. Dougher is now 17 points away from Stony Brook basketball’s all-time scoring record for a Division I player.
The Seawolves also outrebounded the Bearcats, 36-25.
“Coach kept telling us to pound the glass,” Joyner said. “That’s what we do. That’s what we’ve done all year.”
Stony Brook was also the first team in two seasons to score at least 70 points in the quaterfinals, semifinals or finals of the conference tournament.
The game began as many in the crowd had been expecting, as the Seawolves jumped out to an early 7-2 advantage. Dougher had four points, a steal and a rebound in this early spurt.
But Binghamton (1-29)began to claw back and persisted in remaining within striking distance of the Seawolves. The two teams exchanged baskets, and the Bearcats would trail the Seawolves only by two, 16-14 with 7:15 left in the first half.
“You’ve got to give credit to Binghamton,” head coach Steve Pikiell said. “That wasn’t the team I watched play the other day.”
Particularly important for Binghamton during the entirety of the first half were freshmen forward Ben Dickenson and guard Chris Longoria, who scored nine and eight points, respectively, of Binghamton’s overall 28 for the first 20 minutes.
The Seawolves were able to stay afloat in the first half, however. A couple of sharp three-pointers from sophomore guard Anthony Jackson, persistant efforts underneath the basket from Joyner and five rebounds from Brenton were parts of an overall Stony Brook effort to stay on top. Stony Brook would have 16 points underneath the basket and nine second-chance points for the half.
Despite an unremarkable 39.3 percent shooting percentage for the half, the Seawolves went into halftime with a 34-28 lead.
Binghamton got going early in the second half, and Gray made the first bucket of the half with a mid-range jumper. However, Stony Brook would not allow Bingamton to build too much of a head of steam as Brenton and Dougher each responded by chipping in two points.
Binghamton would not be denied, and Dickenson tied things up when he made a three-pointer with 17:33 left to play and then took the lead with 15:45 left.
“We wanted to give him some different looks – make him feel uncomfortable,” Pikiell said of how the Seawolves dealt with Dickinson.
The two teams would exchange buckets over the next couple of minutes, but Dickinson would continue to push the Bearcats forward, scoring nine points in the first nine minutes of the second half.
Then Stony Brook would begin a run of success of its own. Starting with 11:16 left to play and the Seawolves trailing 47-45, they would go on an 19-6 run that included a thunderous dunk from Brenton.
“Basketball is a game of runs,” Coley said. “We just kept fighting and came out with the victory.”
Stony Brook’s lead for the next several minutes would hang around the border of the double-digit range.
With 1:57 left to play, the Seawolves lead the Bearcats, 66-58.
Good free throw shooting down the stretch helped the Seawolves hold off the Bearcats and advance to the conference semifinals. That game will be played on Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Chase Family Arena on the campus of the University of Hartford. Stony Brook will play against No. 4 Albany, which beat No. 5 New Hampshire in Saturday’s quarterfinal.
