STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Sellout crowd. Solid victory.

The Stony Brook men's basketball team continued its surge on Saturday, defeating UMBC, 74-63, at Island Federal Arena.
 
The capacity crowd included young fans from Stony Brook Children's Hospital. Seawolves players wore jerseys each bearing the name of a patient in attendance at the game, and presented the young fans with the game-worn jerseys in the locker room afterward.

"It's a great thing for our players to be a part of," head coach Geno Ford said. "We really look forward to it annually. The hospital and our athletic department do an unbelievable job putting this together. I think just the opportunity to understand there are families and young people battling and having legitimate adversity in their lives and you've got smiles on their faces is great."

Looking to solve a recent string of slow starts, Ford juggled his lineup for the second straight game, this time using freshman Tyler Stephenson-Moore as a starter for the first time in the freshman's collegiate career, and also starting Mouhamadou Gueye.

Stony Brook (15-8, 6-2 America East) had trailed by at least seven points during the opening seven minutes of each of its previous six games — albeit rallying for victories in four of those instances.

"You can't do that and just assume you're going to win," Ford said about the repeated early deficits. "I'm not the kind of guy to panic. It happens once, 'Oh, OK.' It happens twice, 'Oh, OK.' By the time it hits five, I wasn't a 4.0 GPA guy, but I can figure out we've got an issue that we need to resolve. And we're just trying to experiment. The guys are still getting their same number of minutes."

This time, the Seawolves twice trailed by four points in the opening minutes. But they took their first lead, 7-6, when Jeff Otchere collected an offensive rebound and was credited with a putback courtesy of a goaltending call.

Otchere produced four offensive rebounds in the first half — the first three of which proved significant.

Less than a minute after his initial board, Otchere grabbed another and kicked the ball out to Makale Foreman for a trey, again to give Stony Brook the lead.

Then, late in the first half, Otchere prolonged a possession with a rebound. That possession culminated with a three-pointer from Stephenson-Moore that opened Stony Brook's first double-digit advantage, 27-16.

The Retrievers (9-14, 2-6) twice pulled within a point early in the second half, but Stony Brook never relinquished the lead. In fact, the Seawolves reopened a double-digit lead, 52-42, when Foreman drained a trey with 10 minutes, 53 seconds to go. The advantage swelled from there.

Otchere had started 54 straight games to begin his Seawolves career — the third-longest streak to begin a career in the program's Division I era — until Ford juggled the lineup and Otchere's streak was snapped at UMass Lowell on Wednesday. Otchere again came off the bench against UMBC, and a fire seemingly had been lit by his coach.

Elijah Olaniyi finished with a game-high 21 points, while Foreman added 18 and Andrew Garcia had 12. Otchere contributed seven rebounds, two assists, three steals and two blocks.

"Miles Latimer has played great off the bench," Ford said. "Jeff Otchere has had two straight games in which he's had bigger rebounding numbers than what we were getting out of him earlier in the year. So, from my perspective, we haven't settled in on one [lineup]. We're trying to find the right one. ... Ideally, we'd go out and jump up to the lead and be up 14-2. But it's college basketball. The other team practices too. So you don't get that. But we can't come out and be sleepwalking and be down seven, eight, 10, 12 points and then decide, 'Oh, OK, we'll start playing now.'"

Before the game, director of athletics Shawn Heilbron presented Olaniyi with a basketball recognizing the junior scoring his 1,000th career point on Jan. 18 versus Albany.

Stony Brook returns to action Wednesday against UMass Lowell at Island Federal Credit Union Arena.