Second-Half Comeback Nets Stony Brook Another Conference Title

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Down 5-3 in the third quarter, Stony Brook rattled off six unanswered goals to come from behind and beat Drexel 9-6 on Saturday afternoon at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium.

The win gives Stony Brook its 10th conference tournament crown in program history, spanning tenures in the America East and CAA, and second in a row since joining the CAA at the start of last season.

The Seawolves did it not only with timely scoring and a defense that held the Dragons to two second-half goals but with a dominant 12-5 advantage in draw controls, which was split between Charlotte Verhulst, Ellie Masera and Clare Levy. Verhulst led the way with seven draws, one goal and one caused turnover. Masera contributed two draws to go along with a hat trick, earning CAA Championship Most Outstanding Player honors in the process. Levy had one goal, three draw controls, one caused turnover and three ground balls.

“[The draws] are the biggest thing when you’re trying to find your way offensively,” Stony Brook head coach Joe Spallina said. “Sydney Pirreca [our assistant coach] does a killer job at that. We’ve got one of the best takers in Charlotte and the dynamic duo [in Levy and Masera] … [the draw] was the key to the game. Early on, when you are playing against a hot goalie like that, and you’re not getting possessions on top of shooting against a really good goalie, that’s when things can go sideways.”

Avery Hines scooped five ground balls and caused five turnovers. Hines now has 60 caused turnovers in 2024, breaking Brooke Gubitosi’s previous mark of 55 set in 2018.

Drexel’s Jenika Cuocco looked unbeatable at times, making 17 saves for the Dragons, who will now wait anxiously for a possible at-large bid into the NCAA tournament. The Selection Show is Sunday night on ESPN2.

The Dragons became the first team to notch a first-quarter shutout against Stony Brook’s offense, which entered the game ranked eighth in Division I in scoring offense (16.11 goals per game). Cuocco was electric from the jump, stopping 10 of the 12 first-half shots she faced (.833). Only Levy — a defender, appropriately — and Masera (from the 8-meter) got past her. Kate Marano scored two goals and assisted a Corinne Bednarik tally to give Drexel the 3-2 edge at the break.

Think the Seawolves were nervous? Think again.

“I said, ‘You know what? We’re fine,’” Levy said she told the team at halftime. “We’ve been here before. We know how to play lacrosse. Shooters are going to shoot. The defense is going to do what we do best. We like playing [player] down. We’re the hardest workers. We love pressure. We know how to handle it.”

But Drexel had momentum early in the third quarter, netting two of the first three goals and going ahead 5-3 when Marano found Bridget Finley in front at 9:41 of the third quarter.

Even still, the Seawolves remained unrattled, buoyed by a battle-tested schedule that previously included a loss to Johns Hopkins in which Madison Doucette made 14 saves.

“Those are scars,” Spallina said. “We generally go as my mood goes, so I have to stay as even-keeled as possible, even though maybe it’s not always that way. We’ve been in every situation. That’s the mark of a good team.”

And then Stony Brook turned it on, showing just how good it can be.

It started when Masera bounced a free position shot by Cuocco at 6:45 to bring the Seawolves within 5-4.

“[In the first half], I was seeing [Cuocco] instead of the net,” Masera said. “That was an adjustment we had to make at halftime. ‘We’ve got to see the net. We can’t see just her, so I think that was huge for us in letting them fall.”

Cuocco remained poised, turning back an Alex Finn shot at 6:40. But Jaden Hampel scooped the ground ball, and Kailyn Hart split the defense and scored from the top of the crease to even the score at 5-all.

Stony Brook won the ensuing draw, but Cuocco stuffed Verhulst. Yet it was a save by SBU’s Aaliyah Jones on a Bednarik shot at 4:51 that gave the Seawolves a second chance at taking the lead — and they took it. Morgan Mitchell dodged twice and found Verhulst, who this time got past Cuocco to go in front for the first time, 6-5, with 3:23 left in the third quarter.

The Seawolves extended the lead to two when Hampel hit Masera for a goal 34 seconds into the fourth quarter. Verhulst corralled her seventh draw of the afternoon and Stony Brook quickly capitalized when Erin MacQuarrie scored with 13:24 to play, widening the gap to 8-5.

Stony Brook again won the draw — this time Levy doing the honors — eventually leading to a Mitchell free position that capped a 6-0 run to put the Seawolves up 9-5 with 11:58 left. The Seawolves won 7 of 11 second-half draws.

“If you don’t have the ball, you can’t score,” Drexel head coach Kate O’Donnell said.“If you can’t score, you can’t win. It was a problem in our first game. We tried to make some adjustments. I think we had it more of a 3-v-3 game than we did a couple of weeks ago, but it’s something we have to continue to clean up. Their draw unit is arguably some of the best parts of the team.”

The Dragons did score when Allison Drake buried a shot from the 8-meter at 9:05, the Dragons’ first since 9:41 of the third quarter and the last for either team. The Seawolves went two players down on the next possession, with Masera and Mitchell receiving green cards. But a Drake shot went wide at 8:12, and Verhulst stripped Bea Buckley with 7:45 to play.

In the 12 seasons since Spallina’s first with Stony Brook in 2012, the Seawolves have not won a conference tournament crown in only the most extreme circumstances — Spallina’s first year in 2012 (a loss to Albany in the America East final); the 2020 pandemic season when there was no postseason; and 2022 when the Seawolves were ineligible for the America East tournament pending their move to the CAA.

“We don’t really talk about winning the conference, and that’s not a knock on the conference,” Spallina said. “For me, I want the bar as high as possible. Our goal is to win a national championship. Our goal is to get to the Final Four. Charlotte and the rest of the fifth years came back because they wanted to chase a dream. It’s the same for me.”

The Final Four has long been a dream but one Stony Brook has fallen short of in each of its previous trips to the NCAA tournament. A national seed is far from guaranteed with losses to Denver and Johns Hopkins earlier in the season and an RPI outside of the top 10, but in a season in which no team has been unbeatable, Stony Brook has seen everything and feels up for anything.

“If you look back at our [2018] team that was undefeated through the whole year, and we lost in Boston College [in overtime in the quarterfinals], I don’t think that team was ever in any of those,” Spallina said. “It was kind of smooth sailing most of the year, but I think these guys are battle tested.”

Stony Brook will learn its opponent for the NCAA tournament in the Selection Show Sunday at 9 p.m. on ESPN2. Despite the loss, Drexel isn’t out, either. The Dragons have a shot at an at-large bid with wins over Navy and Penn State.

“I love our resume, from our wins to the quality of our losses, too,” O’Donnell said. “That’s something people don’t always want to talk about, the quality of losses. They’re to ranked opponents. We held Stony Brook to under 10 goals today. That is also making a case for ourselves. That’s a credit to the 32 individuals who put on a jersey today for making a case for ourselves every day.”