SBU Sports: Men’s basletball outlasted on the road at Delaware

Stony Brook men’s basketball dropped a road contest to Delaware, 84-74, on Thursday evening at the Bob Carpenter Center in Newark, Delaware. .Joe Octave and CJ Luster II combined to score 43 points, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the Blue Hens’ offense.

Stony Brook played well early on, jumping out to a lead and holding an advantage in the scoring column over the opening five minutes of action.

After Delaware used back-to-back three-point makes to go ahead, the Seawolves answered with back-to-back triples of their own courtesy of Leon Nahar and Luster. A Nick Woodard basket bookended an 8-0 run by Stony Brook that put the Seawolves ahead, 19-14, at the 11:22 mark.

Stony Brook went nearly three minutes without a basket, allowing the Blue Hens to regain the lead. Jared Frey connected from deep to push the Seawolves back ahead, 22-21.

The contest continued to go back and forth, seeing the lead change hands once more in favor of Delaware. Stony Brook flipped things with a 9-2 run over a two-minute span to turn a two-point deficit into a four-point lead.

The Blue Hens closed out the final four minutes of the first half with a 10-6 scoring run to take a 39-37 lead into the locker room.

Octave opened the second half scoring with a basket inside to even the score before Delaware took control of the contest.

The Blue Hens built a double-digit lead less than nine minutes into the second half, maintaining a comfortable lead for the remainder of regulation.

A six-point spurt brought Stony Brook within seven points of Delaware with nine minutes to play, but it was as close as they would come for the rest of the evening.

Delaware led by as many as 17 at one point; Stony Brook battled back but time ran out on the Seawolves’ late push.

“Offensively, we did some good stuff. Delaware has a nice team and both their high-major transfers played like it. We had zero answer for Lane or Camden,” head coach Geno Ford said. “I am really disappointed in our rebounding, because that’s not a strength of their team and we have been one of the better offensive rebounding teams in our conference so far. Tonight, that didn’t show up. We have no consistency as a group right now.