Still looking to regain its pre-break momentum, the Stony Brook men’s basketball team snapped a 3-game losing streak in the latter half of a road weekend series with the NJIT Highlanders in Newark on Jan. 23 and 24.
If last season was a transition year for head coach Geno Ford, this season looks to be a complete re-tooling. Stony Brook not only saw Olaniyi transfer out, but three other starters walked out alongside him — as well as some key bench players.
The plan was to ride a roster full of seniors to glory in what would have been the Stony Brook men’s basketball team’s best chance at reaching the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament since 2016.
Later on April 2, Mount St. Mary’s junior forward Omar Habwe also announced that he had committed to Stony Brook. Habwe had revealed on March 30 that he was planning to graduate transfer and play out his final season of eligibility with a new program.
The same old demons that haunted the Seawolves all year dealt one final blow as No. 2-seeded Stony Brook (20-13) watched its season end in heartbreaking fashion with a 64-58 loss to the No. 3-seeded Hartford Hawks (18-15) on Tuesday, March 10, at Island Federal Arena in the America East semifinals.
Having made 100 buckets from beyond the arc in the campaign, Foreman broke the program’s single-season 3-pointer record, previously held by Bryan Dougher with 95 in 2009-10.
The back-and-forth battle between two offensively cold teams culminated in an unsung hero taking the winning shot, with redshirt-junior guard Makale Foreman icing the game with another clutch performance at the line.
When Vermont redshirt-senior guard Everett Duncan hit a trifecta of 3-pointers over a two and a half minute span to put his team up by 12 points with under two minutes remaining in the game, he made sure to glare at the same people who had harassed him for hours — this time, with a smirk on his face.
Stony Brook (17-9, 8-3) squeaked out a 75-70 triumph on the road over the Binghamton Bearcats (8-16, 2-9) behind career nights from both redshirt-junior forward Andrew Garcia and freshman guard Tyler Stephenson-Moore.
Murphy’s Law — anything that can go wrong will go wrong — was in full effect for the Stony Brook men’s basketball team on Saturday, Feb. 8 as the Seawolves fell 81-64 to the New Hampshire Wildcats on the road in Lundholm Gymnasium.
