Just because they've been there doesn't mean they don't want to do that. Stony Brook's lacrosse players, last year's America East tournament champions, are back in the title game again Saturday on the strength of Wednesday's mostly dominant 12-8 victory over Binghamton.
Stony Brook's control of events got a little wobbly in the fourth quarter, with Binghamton (7-8) scoring the game's last six goals. In the end, though, Stony Brook (10-3) remains "on target," in the words of coach Rick Sowell, and will play Hartford, a 14-11 winner against Maryland-Baltimore County in Wednesday's other tournament semifinal, in Saturday's 3 p.m. final at Stony Brook.
"We want to win back-to-back championships. That's our goal from the beginning of the year; it's never happened before at Stony Brook," said Sowell, whose team has not lost to a conference opponent in 13 straight games dating to the 2009 championship final against UMBC.
And, from there, there would be the unfinished business of reaching the NCAA Final Four after Stony Brook's one-goal loss to Virginia in last year's national quarterfinal.
Jordan McBride and Kevin Crowley, the pair of seniors from New Westminster, British Columbia, who have been athletically finishing each other sentences for four years, again were the team's most potent goal/assist leaders Wednesday. McBride scored six goals (with one assist) while Crowley had four assists (and one goal).
That put McBride's career goal total at 171, the leader among active Division I players -- with 37 goals this season -- and Crowley's career points total at 229, also the best in Division I. It also made Crowley -- 27 goals and 26 assists this year -- the first player in Stony Brook history to collect more than 100 goals and 100 assists.
Aside from two potent, but brief, Binghamton flurries, Stony Brook ruled with its crisp, around-the-horn passing and an ability to win the ground-ball battle (39-22) despite some rugged scrums. Eight consecutive Stony Brook goals -- four of them by McBride -- from halftime through the opening seconds of the fourth period chilled Binghamton's hopes far worse than the raw, windy evening.
Unfinished business? "I think last year we wanted to be in the [conference] final and expected to be in the final," Crowley said, "and we knew if we played to our potential, that's where we'd be. So we're looking at it game-to-game and excited to play in it again."
To finish that thought, as McBride so often has finished Crowley's assists with a goal, McBride said, "I think, from last year, we just want to get to that spot we were, to overcome that and win that game."
