Stony Brook tops Hofstra with late surge to reach CAA championship game

This would have been right at home in playgrounds from Farmingdale to Farmingville.

For 40 minutes, Stony Brook and Hofstra engaged in a Long Island street fight. The Seawolves and Pride traded body blows, heavy and hard, with each side giving as good as it got.

And in the end, Stony Brook landed the most devastating punch of all — a late 13-0 run.

“It was a great win for us,” coach Geno Ford said after the seventh-seeded Seawolves outlasted third-seeded Hofstra, 63-59, in a Coastal Athletic Association Tournament semifinal at the Entertainment and Sports Arena in Washington on Monday night.

Stony Brook will meet top-seeded Charleston in Tuesday night’s championship game, with the winner clinching a berth in the NCAA Tournament. The Cougars beat fifth-seeded Towson, 61-56, in the first semifinal.

With Hofstra leading 51-48, Tyler Stephenson-Moore (23 points) sank a tying three-pointer with 4:37 left. Dean Noll also hit a three-pointer in a 13-0 run that ended with three free throws by Aaron Clarke as Stony Brook took a 61-51 lead with 37 seconds remaining.

“Hats off to Stony Brook,” Hofstra coach Speedy Claxton said. “They earned this one. They made big shot after big shot when they needed to. So congrats to them. Good luck to them.”

By no means was the game over, though. Tyler Thomas drilled a three-pointer and hit two free throws to cut the deficit to 61-56 with 15 seconds left, then hit another three-pointer to make it 62-59 with six seconds to play.

Stony Brook’s Keenan Fitzmorris missed the first of two free throws with five seconds remaining, but he hit the second to clinch it.

“Hofstra has pounded on us for years, if you go and look at the historic record,” Ford said. “We have hardly beaten them ever. So to play them and beat them in such a meaningful game is huge for our players, our program, the community [and] the university. A lot goes into this. A lot of people put a lot of resources in to be competitive in [basketball] and it’s always hard. Thankful we won.”

Thomas had 32 points, nine rebounds and six assists and Jaquan Carlos had 13 points and six assists for Hofstra.

“He’s the definition of what we want a Hofstra basketball player to look like,” Claxton said of Thomas. “Hard worker both on and off the court. True leader. He comes to work every single day and truly [tries] to make himself and his teammates better.”

Entering the game, Hofstra was 28-6 against Stony Brook, including four straight wins and nine wins in the last 10 matchups. The teams played twice in the regular season, with Hofstra winning both games.

Thomas’ baseline 17-foot jumper with four-tenths of a second left gave Hofstra a 72-71 win over Stony Brook on Feb. 1.

“Tyler Thomas hit an unbelievable shot that I still want to puke when I think about it,’’ Ford said before the game. “Those kinds of games are stomach-punch losses and our kids have just been resilient, man.’’

And now they’re in position to win a conference title.