Burlington, Vt. - Vermont shot 48 percent from the field and connected on nine three-pointers, as the Stony Brook men's basketball team saw its eight-game winning streak snapped in a 68-49 loss to the Catamounts Sunday at a sold-out Patrick Gymnasium.
The Seawolves, who have still won 14 of their last 16 games, fall to 17-8 overall and 12-2 in America East. Vermont improves to 17-10 overall and 11-2 in America East. Although Stony Brook has a half-game lead over Vermont in the conference standings, the Catamounts now control their own destiny for the No. 1 seed in the America East Championship via a tiebreaker.
The Seawolves could not find a shooting rhythm in front of the sell-out crowd. As a team, SBU was 17-for-51 (33.3%) from the field, 0-for-15 from the three-point line and 15-for-26 (57.7%) from the foul line. Before today, Stony Brook had made at least one three-pointer in 174 consecutive games.
Senior Dallis Joyner (Norfolk, Va.) led the Seawolves with 13 points to earn his team's America East Player of the Game honors. Junior Tommy Brenton (Columbia, Md.) had nine points and nine rebounds. Senior Al Rapier (Chicago, Ill.) also had nine rebounds.
Vermont was led by its America East Player of the Game, Four McGlynn, who scored 24 points on 7-of-12 shooting, including four made three-pointers.
"Give credit to Vermont, they're a good basketball team and they played well," head coach Steve Pikiell said. "They were the better team today."
Stony Brook fell behind early thanks to hot Vermont shooting as the Catamounts made seven of their first eight shots. Back-to-back three-pointers from Luke Apfeld and Brendan Bald to open the game gave the Catamounts a 6-0 lead. UVM expanded it to nine points after Matt Glass' three at 13:01 to make it 15-6.
Vermont then made it a 12-point lead after Brian Voelkel stripped Brenton of the ball and McGlynn took it in for a layup to make it 21-9 with 8:44 left.
Stony Brook did not back down and started playing defense and taking advantage of size in the paint. The Seawolves closed the half on a 13-2 run, limiting UVM to just one field goal in the final 8:44.
Joyner had four offensive rebounds and they all led to layups underneath. His bucket on a put-back at 8:14 made it 21-11. He had another one at 6:23 off a senior Bryan Dougher (Scotch Plains, N.J.) miss. He then ended the half with another offensive board and layup at 0:41 to make it a one-point game at halftime, 23-22, in favor of Vermont.
In the second half, the Seawolves just couldn't find the handle on offense while Vermont used the three-point goal to pull away. Glass hit a three-pointer to make it a four-point game, and McGlynn knocked down a three-pointer to make it a seven-point lead, 33-26.
Brenton cut it to five, 35-30, with a layup, and then the Catamounts went on a 16-2 run that included two more McGlynn three-pointers and culminated with Bald's triple at 7:03, making it 51-32 in favor of Vermont.
Stony Brook got no closer than 14 points the rest of the game as UVM shot 52 percent in the second half and made 15 of 18 free throw attempts after not getting to the line once in the first half.
Stony Brook must now take a break from America East competition. The Seawolves will play at Northeastern Saturday at 1 p.m., in a game scheduled through Sears ESPN BracketBusters.
