Asked if he read the riot act to his team at halftime, coach Chuck Priore said: "The opposite. This is not a team I have to yell at. They don't do anything wrong . . . What happened in the second half needed to happen -- we ran the ball to win the game. The third quarter is as good a quarter as we've played all year."
Lafayette sent the second-half kickoff out of bounds, giving Stony Brook the ball at its own 40-yard line. The Seawolves reeled off a 25-yard run by Brock Jackolski, who carried 17 times for 98 yards, and Maysonet followed with a 35-yard sprint around left end to the end zone for a 13-6 lead.
Priore switched at halftime to a three-tight end set, and the offense took off. He also decided to abandon a passing game that produced only one completion in 13 attempts to an injury-riddled corps of wide receivers.
"I started running the ball more, and the O-line did a great job of opening holes," Maysonet said. "We wanted to get that first win under our belt. It was hard being 0-3. Finally."
On Lafayette's first possession of the second half, Stony Brook linebacker Jawara Dudley blitzed and obliterated Leopards quarterback Andrew Shoop, whose fumble was recovered by Mulrooney and returned to the Lafayette 42. Five plays later, Maysonet scored from the 1-yard line.
For Mulrooney, a transfer from Boston College, it was a career game. In the first half, he had an interception, made a touchdown-saving tackle and forced a Lafayette fumble, then hit Shoop on a pass attempt that resulted in an interception.
The Seawolves stopped Lafayette drives at the Stony Brook 23-, 4- and 15-yard lines in the first half and kept pounding Shoop in the second half.
"Whenever you're in the red zone, you have to be turnover-savvy," Mulrooney said. "It's a tribute to our defense the way we swarm the ball. We attack people."
Midway through the third quarter, the Leopards countered with a 52-yard touchdown pass from Shoop to Mitchell Bennett to cut the deficit to 20-13, but SBU's Wes Skiffington hit a career-best 46-yard field goal. He boosted his career total to 164 kicking points, surpassing the previous Stony Brook record of 156 set by Mike Soto in 2003.
Lafayette had a chance to pull within a touchdown early in the fourth quarter, but SBU linebacker Grant Nakwaasah blocked Austin O'Brien's 41-yard field-goal attempt and Craig Richardson returned it 25 yards to the Leopards' 42. Maysonet put the game out of reach with a 30-yard touchdown run and later added a 9-yard scamper against a defense stacked to stop him.
Priore was especially happy to win in front of such a raucous crowd. "They kept us in the game in the first half," Priore said. "You ride that emotion. Those key turnovers we got in the red zone were right by the student section. That's as good a crowd as we've had since I've been here."
