"What's a Seawolf?" Brown 1-0 Stony Brook

When Stevenson Field is packed to the rafters as it was last night there is a special feeling about the place. One of the things that you can always rely on is some "intelligent" heckling from the home fans. So it was yesterday evening when the home fans responded to the small but loud contingent from Long Island with the lyrical question you see in the headline above..... do Seawolves swim?
The team knew before yesterday's contest that they were in for a battle - this Stony Brook team had an unbelievable run of results in their final seven games of the season, conceding just two goals en route to the America East championship. Many of you will have seen the YouTube video of their comical penalty shootout victory versus Hartford.....
Preparing for tournament games on two days notice is always a challenge. Information is difficult to get and rarely have we seen these teams live. Ray Houghton had the lead on this one, while The Tourist got to work on the "what if" preparation work for the next round. When you come to the games and watch this team play for 90 minutes, the fact that our team has such an advantage in terms of knowledge of the opponent, and a game plan to beat them, is testament to the unbelievable amount of prep time put in by the coaching staff.......
The match kicked off under a perfect Fall evening sky. The temperature was surprisngly warm for late November. From the kick-off it was clear that, once again, our boys had the energy and desire to take the game to this team. Just 90 seconds in Sean had an opportunity and put the ball narrowly wide. Within the next 20 minutes we created a hatful of chances to score, yet uncharacteristically we couldn't find the target. Dylan, in particular was having joy on the left flank and bamboozled a couple of Seawolves before serving a quality ball into the box. On the opposite side the Wallsy/Jonny combination was opening up the visitors defence like a can of beans.....
How we didn't score in the opening half was anyone's guess. Our boys played at a ferocious pace, while the visitors were limited to one half-chance from a narrow angle that Grandstrand dealt with comfortably.
The second-half, predictably, was played at a slower pace, with the visitors changing their shape and style to deal with our passing more effectively. We still created some decent scoring opportunities and looked comfortable defensively for the most part. On the two occasions that the visitors did get behind us Evan was on hand with a last-ditch tackle and Big Paul made a good stop from a header.
In similar fashion to the Dartmouth game, after a twenty-minute spell for the visitors our team began to control the contest again. Rob was biting in with tackles, while Jonny, Sean, Nicky and Tayls all caused problems for the visiting defence. The back-four were excellent throughout, with Evan and Fluffy looking solid in the middle.
As the second-half wore on it seemed like a matter of time before we scored. TJ went closest with an excellent header that cannoned off the foot of the post....
And so it was to extra time..... the calm, soothing and efferevescent words of Coach Noonan relaxed the players during the intermission...... oh sorry, wrong script...... our leader proceeded to leave the players in no doubt that the passing needed to improve if we were to get the win that our superiority deserved....!
The first extra period passed without major incident, except for one ludicrous decision by the referee in awarding Stony Brook a free-kick after Evan had been dragged to the ground and man-handled by the chippy and pesky visiting striker from Long Island. Thankfully Grandstrand dealt comfortably with the ensuing free-kick.
The second period of extra time was all Brown. Stony Brook were struggling to cope and the introduction of Jonny just two minutes into the period proved to be the super-sub decision of the night. Just a minute after being introduced Jon received a great ball into the channel from Robbie (who was blatantly pole-axed by a nasty tackle in the process), he took one touch and clipped the ball to the back post with the outside of his foot. The ball was deflected into the path of Sean who made no mistake from eight yards away. Cue pandemonium! With just six minutes remaining in the game we had done it!
Up next for these resilient and resourceful boys is a trip to Chapel Hill to take on the number five seeded Tar Heels of North Carolina..... wear your seat belts!