With less than three minutes to go in the first half, senior guard Lucas Woodhouse expressed his frustrations on the court clapping his hands and yelling for the ball. Woodhouse could not get it going for his team on the offensive side of the ball, shooting 1-for-5 and dropping just two points in his 15 first half minutes.
Woodhouse was able to take control of Wednesday night’s game coming out of the half as he denied an inbound pass and took the ball coast to coast for an easy lay-in. Woodhouse hit back to back baskets, this time with a running floater in traffic to put the Seawolves up 32-25 early in the second half, sparking the offense.
He and junior guard Bryan Sekunda combined for 24 second-half points, leading the team to a road win over the Hawks by a score of 66-54 in the Chase Family Arena on Wednesday night. Stony Brook was able to improve its conference record to 11-2 and go on to 16-10 overall for the season.
Stony Brook struggled as a unit as the team went into halftime up only one possession on a low scoring 25-22 game. Hartford dominated the boards against Stony Brook, out rebounding the Seawolves 23-17 at the half. Both teams had poor shooting performances as neither shot better than 33 percent from the field going into halftime, with Stony Brook shooting 32 percent and Hartford knocking down 29 percent of its shots.
It was an uphill endeavor for the Seawolves, even with the Hawks missing their two leading scorers, redshirt senior guard Jalen Ross and sophomore guard Jason Dunne, due to injury.
Sekunda sank three second-half shots from beyond the arc coming off the bench to help propel his team to a cohesive victory. The Seawolves had an advantage in bench scoring, totaling 34 bench points compared to a depleted Hawks team that only tallied four.
Hartford was able to take the lead at the start of the second half as freshman guard J.R. Lynch hit a deep three-ball to put the Hawks up 35-32 with 13:55 left to go in the game. Sekunda and Woodhouse were able to answer as they hit back to back three-pointers to take the lead again and the Seawolves never looked back.
Junior center Hassan Attia attempted to swing the momentum to Hartford’s side every chance he could as he dominated in the paint, throwing it down on the Seawolves’ big men. The center filled the stats sheet as he scored 14 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and swatted 5 shots in the game.
The Seawolves responded by hitting 11 shots from downtown in the game. Sekunda and junior guard U.C. Iroegbu combined to make seven from beyond 21 feet.
Stony Brook has now won its last 19 of 20 matchups against Hartford and will search for their sixth straight win in the final game of the regular season at home on Saturday, Feb. 18 against Binghamton at 7 p.m. at Island Federal Credit Union Arena.
