BURLINGTON, Vt. — The road to the NCAA Tournament will go through Island Federal Arena.

The Stony Brook women's basketball team clinched the program's first America East regular-season title and secured the No. 1 seed and homecourt advantage throughout the conference tournament with a 72-68 come-from-behind victory against Vermont on Wednesday night at Patrick Gymnasium.

The Seawolves claimed their 25th win to establish a program record for victories, topping the 1986-87 edition that went 24-5 in Division III while led by Stony Brook Athletics Hall of Fame coach Dec McMullen.

Stony Brook (25-1, 13-0 AE) also extended the nation's longest winning streak to 22 games.

"Our team has worked really hard," coach Caroline McCombs said. "They know that it's another step in the process. They deserve it, but we're not done. We just want to finish what we started."

The Seawolves are now three wins from becoming the first team to enter the America East tourney undefeated in conference play since UAlbany in 2013, and the eighth overall in conference history.

Stony Brook's final regular-season games come in a seven-day span next week: Sunday at Maine, Wednesday at Hartford, then Saturday against UAlbany.

Against Vermont, Stony Brook stormed back from a nine-point third-quarter deficit. The Seawolves rattled off 10 straight points, taking the lead, 51-50, on Victoria Johnson's fall-away jumper with 1:40 remaining in the period.

The Catamounts answered to take a three-point lead into the fourth quarter, but Stony Brook claimed the lead for good, 68-66, with 2:15 to go in the game on Anastasia Warren's three-pointer. 

Trailing by two points, Vermont had possession coming out of a timeout with 13.0 seconds remaining, but turned the ball over on a travel in the waning seconds thanks to strong defense from Oksana Gouchie-Provencher. Kaela Hilaire then clinched it with a pair of free throws with 1.1 seconds to go.

Warren finished with a game-high 22 points. Hilaire followed with 17 points.

It marked the third straight tightly contested victory for Stony Brook. The Seawolves had last-minute wins against New Hampshire (52-50) and Binghamton (58-54) in their previous two games.

Stony Brook has now won seven straight meetings with Vermont (12-15, 6-8 AE).

"This was a hard-fought game on both ends," McCombs said. "I thought Vermont did a great job of really attacking us early. They made us work for everything that we got. I'm really proud of our team. We had a lot of different players who stepped up in key moments."