Hofstra women's basketball falls to Stony Brook despite strong start

The Hofstra University women’s basketball team fell by a score of 67-49 to the Stony Brook Seawolves on Friday, Feb. 2. at the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex. This drops them to 1-7 in Coastal Athletic Association (CAA) play and 7-12 on the season. Stony Brook improved to a 17-2 record with a 7-1 mark in conference play.

This game marked the Pride’s worst performance from beyond the arc of the season, they shot a dismal 11.1% from three, exacerbated by Emma Von Essen’s 1/11 stat line. Despite the rough outing, Hofstra head coach Danielle Santos Atkinson has faith that Von Essen and her team as a whole can turn their poor shooting around.

“[Von Essen] absolutely bounces back, she will not at all waver or doubt herself one bit. And me either; we have the utmost confidence in her,” Santos said.

Despite the lopsided final score, the Pride had short stretches of dominant play scattered throughout the game. They opened the game on a 7-2 run, eventually taking a 15-5 lead, their largest lead of the game. The Pride played the entire game with a high level of defensive intensity and saw their most success in the first quarter, holding the Seawolves to single digits and forcing five turnovers.

Sorelle Ineza set the tone in the first quarter, scoring four quick points after a 3-pointer from Von Essen to open the scoring. Ineza led the team with 12 points on the day.

“She’s one of those players who knows her abilities and knows what she means to our team, and we need her,” Santos said. “She continues to work every day and her teammates have continued to give her confidence… She’s so positive and she continues to work. Where she is right now is where we need her to be.”

The Pride continued to play solid basketball throughout most of the second quarter before surrendering a 6-0 run to Stony Brook that turned a 25-20 lead into a 26-25 halftime deficit. That was the last time Hofstra held the lead on Friday night.

The second half of the match belonged to the Seawolves. They went on a 13-0 run to open the third quarter and never looked back. Despite the Pride fighting back admirably – getting the Stony Brook lead down to four at one point – they could not complete the comeback. The Seawolves made sure of it by putting on an offensive clinic in the fourth quarter, making 10 of their 16 shots for an impressive 62.5% shooting percentage in the final frame.

“I thought we came out pretty flat in the second half, we came out flat offensively. Then we allowed some of our mistakes and some of the things that they were doing deflate us a bit,” Santos said, “It’s the fight in those moments that we’ve got to continue to work on.”

Stony Brook had four players in double figures: Gigi Gonzalez led the way with 17 points and Sherese Pittman, Victoria Keenan and Khari Clark added 16, 15 and 12 points, respectively.

Santos was incredibly complimentary of Gonzalez’s performance, “She’s a three-level scorer, when you have someone like that who has a scorer’s mentality, she’s not going to let herself stay dormant for too long.” She also highlighted the Pride’s defensive problems in the second half, “We did a great job in the first half, and then, we lost our defensive intensity in the second half, and with that we allowed them to get to the paint way too easily.”

This loss marked Hofstra’s seventh straight defeat. When asked about how the team plans to right the ship, Santos was candid about her team.

“We’ve only got two options,” she said, “One is to pull our bootstraps up and get back to work. And one of them is to quit, and none of us from the top down has quit in us. We know what this team is capable of and we understand that any given night in the CAA, it’s anybody’s game. We have not lost sight of that, and we haven’t lost sight of our goals for the year.”

The Pride will be back at home on Sunday, Feb. 4, when they will welcome the 7-13 Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens to Hempstead. Tipoff is at 2 p.m. at the David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex.

 Photo courtesy of Hofstra Athletics/Alexis Friedman