Senior Jordan McBride celebrated Senior Day with five goals, and the #13/14 Stony Brook Seawolves men’s lacrosse team clinched a share of the America East regular season crown with a 23-11 win over the University at Albany Great Danes at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium on Saturday night.
“It was a hell of a win,” Seawolves head coach Rick Sowell said after the team’s fifth straight victory. “Our goal was to secure that number one seed, so it was a good game to win.”
McBride’s five goals moves him into the team lead with 27 goals this season.
“Jordan is the best scorer I’ve ever coached,” Sowell said. “But we do have other guys who can put the ball in the back of the net.”
Stony Brook (8-3, 4-0 America East) showed off those “other guys” on Saturday, when 12 different Seawolves found their way into the goal column, including a hattrick from senior Timmy Trenkle.
Early on, it was Albany (4-9, 0-4 America East) that had the upper hand, when junior Joe Resetarits received a pass from freshman Miles Thompson and sent a low shot past Stony Brook netminder Rob Camposa to capitalize on the man-up opportunity just 1:15 into the game.
The Seawolves answered back with a goal by senior Tom Compitello with 11:21 to go in the first quarter.
The teams traded goals for the rest of the first quarter, which finished 5-5, with Thompson scoring three times for the Great Danes.
But the Seawolves defense tightened up in the second quarter, allowing just one goal while the high-powered Stony Brook offense exploded for seven, pulling away for a 12-6 halftime lead.
“That first quarter, I think Senior Night, those emotions were quite strong,” Sowell said. “But once we settled down though, things started to go our way and we did a lot of good things.”
The Stony Brook dominance extended into the third period, when, after stopping a 20-second possession by Albany to start the quarter, the Seawolves held the ball for more than five minutes in the Great Dane end before McBride scored with 8:55 to go in the third.
Stony Brook was able to get some of the seniors into the game late on, with John Bella making four saves in the final 9:09 and Tyler Hope netting a goal.
Coach Sowell said he was pleased that the Seawolves were able to find their scoring groove as the conference tournament draws near.
“It’s no big secret that we’ve been a little inconsistent with our offense,” Sowell said. “We shot a lot this week [in practice], and it’s good to see that it paid off.”
The win was Stony Brook’s fifth straight over Albany, and the Seawolves haven’t lost an America East conference game since May 2,2009, when they fell to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in the conference championship game.
Stony Brook will look to keep that streak alive when it travels to face Vermont on April 30.
“Now we’ve got to go and finish it off in Vermont,” Sowell said. “We don’t want to lose a game in conference.”
