Stony Brook faces Hofstra in CAA Tournament semifinals
Stony Brook's Aaron Clarke, left, and Hofstra's Darlinstone Dubar will face off in the CAA Tournament semifinals on Monday night. Credit: Jess Rapfogel
The slightest of smirks crossed Aaron Clarke’s face.
A few minutes after Stony Brook outlasted Drexel, 91-88, in double overtime in a Coastal Athletic Association Tournament quarterfinal game on Sunday night, the grad student was asked about the possibility of the Seawolves playing Hofstra in the semifinals.
“We’ll be excited to play whoever,” Clarke said. “If it is Hofstra, then that’s who it is and we’ll be ready to go out there and play. I mean, we didn’t come here just to win two games. So whoever it is, we’re going in there with the mindset that [we’re] trying to win.”
A little more than two hours after Clarke said that, Hofstra put the finishing touches on its 73-58 rout of Delaware. That guaranteed that the Nassau and Suffolk County universities would go head-to-head for the right to play in the conference championship game, making this the most important matchup in the rivalry’s history.
The seventh-seeded Seawolves and the third-seeded Pride met in Monday night’s second semifinal game, with the winner advancing to Tuesday’s conference title game against top-seeded Charleston or fifth-seeded Towson.
Hofstra and SBU played twice in the regular season, with Hofstra winning both games. The Pride took an 80-74 decision at Island Federal Credit Union Arena on Jan. 22. Ten days later, at Mack Sports and Entertainment Complex, Tyler Thomas’ baseline 17-foot jumper with four-tenths of a second remaining gave Hofstra a 72-71 win.
Hofstra is 28-6 against Stony Brook, including four straight wins and nine wins in the last 10 matchups.
“[They are a] really good opponent,” Hofstra coach Speedy Claxton said after beating Delaware. “Stony Brook is a well-coached team. They’re older. They’re experienced. So we know we’re going to have our work cut out for us. We had two really close games during the regular season, so we know what is coming up for us.”
As Claxton was quick to point out, though, Hofstra also is a veteran team.
The Pride reached the CAA Tournament semifinals for the fifth time in the last six seasons. Stony Brook is in its second year as a CAA member school. In last season’s CAA Tournament, the Seawolves defeated North Carolina A&T before falling to Charleston.
But as Clarke said — and coach Geno Ford echoed — the Seawolves are not awed by either the stage or the opponent.
“We’ve got a belief that we’re good enough to beat everybody,” Ford said. “We played so many games we lead 28 minutes [and] the other team nine. We just haven’t finished.
“Hofstra, Tyler Thomas hit an unbelievable shot that I still want to puke when I think about it. Those [kinds] of games are stomach-punch losses and our kids have just been resilient, man. They’ve just hung in there and kept battling, so they believe that we’re good enough to do it.”