STONY BROOK, N.Y. — The Stony Brook men's lacrosse team rallied from a pair of four-goal deficits on Saturday.
Unfortunately for the Seawolves, UMBC withstood the furious push.
Ryan Frawley scored in overtime and the Retrievers halted Stony Brook's six-game winning streak with a 14-13 victory at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium.
Stony Brook had been seeking retribution after falling to UMBC in four overtimes in the America East opener on March 6. Since then, the Seawolves had rattled off six straight conference wins, parlaying that success into a No. 14 ranking in this week's Inside Lacrosse poll.
Now sitting at 6-2 in the league, Stony Brook already has clinched a postseason berth with one game remaining. However, the Seawolves now will need help in order to host the America East tournament May 6-8, with UMBC owning an identical record and having a tiebreaker by virtue of sweeping meetings in Baltimore and on Long Island.
Vermont remained in contention as well. The Catamounts entered Saturday's game against Binghamton at 5-1 in America East.
Stony Brook completes its regular season next Saturday at Vermont, while UMBC travels to NJIT.
On Saturday, the Seawolves tied the score at 12 with 9:15 remaining in the fourth quarter when
Mike McCannell put home the rebound of
Dylan Pallonetti's initial shot. And after UMBC's Brandon Galloway answered to restore a one-goal lead for the Retrievers,
Matt DeMeo's goal with 2:34 to go deadlocked the score at 13.
Cory VanGinhoven had staked the Seawolves to a 5-4 lead midway through the second quarter. However, the Retrievers produced six of the next seven goals spanning the middle two periods.
Stony Brook clawed within 12-10 on Pallonetti's third goal of the game, which came with 16 seconds remaining in the third quarter. DeMeo then scored a man-up goal in the opening minute of the fourth quarter as the Seawolves moved within a goal, setting up McCannell's tying score.
Van Ginhoven, Pallonetti and DeMeo each produced hat tricks to lead the Seawolves.
Before the regular-season home finale, Stony Brook honored 13 seniors:
Connor Grippe,
Wayne White,
Chris Pickel Jr.,
CJ Trenkle,
Tom Haun,
Tom Dugan,
Jimmy Morrell,
Devin O'Leary, VanGinhoven,
Kyle Hebert,
Patrick Kaschalk, McCannell and
Danny Cassidy.
The pregame ceremony included family members introducing the student-athletes on the scoreboard with prerecorded messages.
"As talented a team as we are, I don't think we showed that for the majority of the game," coach
Anthony Gilardi said. "We fight and claw, which is a credit to the team that we have. But I didn't do a good enough job having us ready. And our energy, excitement and execution wasn't there. We made some plays and were able to tie it up. We just weren't good enough."
