Men’s lacrosse midfielder Mike Rooney and softball pitcher Allison Cukrov were named Players of the Week by the America East on Monday afternoon.
Rooney has been racking up awards this season. He has now been named Player of the Week of the conference four times, an impressive feat considering that it is also the conference in which Lyle Thompson, the all-time NCAA leading scorer, plays.
As Stony Brook prepares for the upcoming conference tournament, Rooney has been spectacular. In two home games last week against Duke and Binghamton, the East Islip native totalled five goals and nine assists.
Rooney’s final point of the week came on an overtime assist on a game-winning goal by Challen Rogers to topple the visiting Bearcats, 14-13, on Sunday. With this assist, Rooney became the all-time leading scorer in Seawolves men’s lacrosse history with 233 points, passing 2011 graduate Kevin Crowley.
In the game with Binghamton, Rooney tallied two goals and seven assists, his third nine point game of the season. Seven of his nine points came in the second half, as the Seawolves erased a 10-4 deficit. Against Duke on Tuesday, he scored three goals and two assists.
Rooney leads the country this season with 91 points and 53 assists, both school records, breaking former records held by John Warrack in 1984 and John Sproat in 1990. With nine or more points in the rest of the season, Rooney will become the fifth player in America East history to score 100 points in the season.
The Seawolves will be back in action on Friday for a road game against the Hartford Hawks before the America East tournament begins the following weekend.
For the twelfth time in her illustrious softball career, Stony Brook senior pitcher Allison Cukrov has taken home America East Player of the Week honors.
In three appearances last week, Cukrov went 3-0 with a 0.66 ERA, striking out 18 batters in 21.1 innings. This was a driving force behind Stony Brook’s successful week, as the Seawolves won five of their six games played.
Curkov, the reigning America East Pitcher of the Year, has pitched drastically better in recent games than she had early in the season. Earlier this month, her ERA had ballooned to over 5.00 at its worst point. She hardly looked like the ace pitcher she had been in 2014.
But with her success in recent games, she has gotten her ERA down almost two full runs to a respectable 3.24. Cukrov’s eight wins are good for second on the team and with just six more, she would become Stony Brook’s career leader in the category.
The resurgent Cukrov has provided the Seawolves with two dominant starting pitchers at the top of their rotation. Fellow Stony Brook pitcher Jane Sallen has also pitched well this season, as she has gone 12-8 with a 2.36 ERA.
If Cukrov can continue to pitch like she did last week, it would do volumes for the Seawolves’ postseason hopes. The team is currently tied for first in the America East with a 7-2 conference record. With seven conference games to go, the revitalization of Cukrov can only help Stony Brook going forward.
Chris Gaine contributed the softball portion of this story.
