Second Half Reset Pushes No. 5 Stony Brook Over Yale

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — No. 5 Stony Brook barely made it on the field for the second half against Yale. An 8-4 lead would’ve been fine for most teams against a Bulldogs program that head coach Joe Spallina called his pick to win the Ivy League this year.

But Stony Brook isn’t like most programs. Ellie Masera also isn’t like most players, but the All-American had been held to one goal in the first half, which came 31 seconds into the first quarter.

“I challenged certain players,” Spallina said. “I got after them a little bit…I hold my best players to the higher standard.”

One of them, Masera, was seated to Spallina’s left in the post-game press conference. After the talking to — as Stony Brook hustled to the center circle just in the nick of time — Kailyn Hart gave her teammate one last push.

“Walking out of the locker room, I said to her, ‘You’re Ellie Masera. Let’s go,’” Hart said.

Masera went alright. She opened the second half by firing a shot from long-range by Yale’s Clare Boon to give the Seawolves a 9-4 lead. Masera would score once more in the third quarter and finish with three goals and an assist as the Seawolves (2-0) downed Yale (2-1) 13-7 on Saturday. 

“Our locker room just came together. ‘We need to clean this up,’” Masera said. “The first half was a little rocky. It ended up being me, but it could’ve been Hart. It could’ve been anybody.”

It was Hart in the first half. The senior attacker tallied all five of her points — three goals and two assists — through the first 30 minutes.

“In the first quarter, they were in zone, and we were killing their zone,” Hart said. “Early in the second quarter, they switched to man, and we had to adjust to it as a team.”

Yale hadn’t shown 1v1 in its first two games, a pair of wins over Vermont and Quinnipiac.

“Early season games are tricky,” Spallina said. “There’s a limited amount of film you have. The first two games, they played all zone. It took us a little bit of the second quarter to get into a flow. It’s different…the spacing [and] off-ball movements — that affected some of our dodging angles.”

The Bulldogs’ defense also kept sliding to Masera, knocking the midfielder off her game in the early going.

“When you’re a star, you’re going to be treated like a star from us and from other teams,” Spallina said. “That often means getting special attention. The second she got it, they got a call, and the slide was coming immediately. I think she did a really good job identifying that, stepping off of that and making some real good plays.”

One of those came at 5:21 of the third quarter when Masera drove down the middle of the arc to give the Seawolves an 11-4 lead. Taylor Everson scored the Bulldogs’ first goal of the second half at 2:15.

But Jaden Hampel, whose six-point day carried the Seawolves in game one against Michigan, scored 56 seconds into the final frame, and Masera hit Charlotte Verhulst inside at 12:56 to push the score to 13-5.

Yale got the last two, both courtesy of Bri Carrasquillo. But in the end, the box score carried familiar refrains: The defense cleaned up, holding Yale to single-digit goals. And Masera and Hart led SBU’s offense with a combined nine points.

“Everyone is game-planning for these two,” Spallina said of Masera and Hart. “That’s no secret. They have to play through stuff and battle, and it’s not going to be easy.”

The rest of the season won’t be easy either, as Stony Brook tries to avoid another familiar refrain. The Seawolves have fallen to top-seeded UNC by three goals in each of the last two quarterfinals. Wins like today’s serve as building blocks.

“We understand if we want a different outcome that there are other games on our schedule that we have to win and not do anything other than win,” Spallina said. “Otherwise, you flip it back to other people telling us what we’re worth.”

Stony Brook will hit the west coast next week, starting with San Diego State on March 1 before a bout with a Stanford team reeling after a Presidents’ Day loss to Jacksonville.

“It’s not easy to play out there,” Spallina said. “After that, we come back, quick turnaround, and then we fly out to Northwestern. We know what’s ahead of us. The best time to fix the roof is when it’s not raining. There are a lot of positives we’ll take out of this game collectively.”