It was the worst of halves, it was the best of halves. But they came in the right order for Stony Brook in its men's basketball home opener, so in the end, everything looked perfectly sunny in an 80-43 blowout of Division III opponent Mount Ida (Newton, Mass.) yesterday.
To have lost to a member of the hoops plutocracy, UConn, in its tip-off game Friday in Connecticut hardly left up-and-coming Stony Brook in a squalid state. But against smaller, outmanned Mount Ida at home, Stony Brook had no reason to expect something like a wretched, Dickensian experience to linger.
Thus did a first-half shooting percentage of 28.6 percent - a veritable poverty of scoring touch - make Stony Brook appear all the poorer. Mount Ida led for almost 19 of the half's 20 minutes, with Stony Brook needing a seven-point surge in the final 1:10 to take a 34-29 lead.
Stony Brook started the game by missing 13 of its first 15 shots, including an 0-for-6 half by Bryan Dougher, five of those from three-point range. Stony Brook went almost 10 minutes without a field goal but was kept afloat by Mount Ida's own bad aim (35.5 percent in the first half) and the Seawolves' repeated trips to the free-throw line.
But the proverbial worm - and everything else - turned in the second half, starting with Danny Carter's immediate three-point basket that triggered an 11-0 Stony Brook charge.
Right on the heels of Carter's score, Dougher suddenly shed all resemblance to his first-half woes: He sank four quick three-pointers and wound up making all six of his attempts from behind the arc in his 21-point second half. He finished with 24 points, and Al Rapier added 11 points and 11 rebounds.
Stony Brook coach Steve Pikiell's summary of the afternoon was simple: "Bryan missed all his shots in the first half and made all his shots in the second half. That's kind of the tale of the story."
Whoever that guy was wearing Dougher's No. 10 jersey in the first half, "it wasn't me," he said. "At the half, I did a mechanics check; I wasn't really using my legs on my shot."
And now comes a real wake-up call. Stony Brook will play Monmouth at 6 a.m. Tuesday as the first game in an ESPN 24 Hours of Basketball event. Pikiell expects he'll have to rouse his players by 2 or 3 a.m.
What in the Dickens will that be like?
