Lafayette College football team fails to take advantage of opportunities in 37-20 loss to Stony Brook

FROM THE EXPRESS TIMES

Stony Brook gave Lafayette a chance to win Saturday night’s football game.

After the Leopards graciously declined their opportunity to do so, perhaps as not to ruin the Seawolves’ homecoming, the Seawolves took up the opportunity and ran with it — quite literally — to a 37-20 non-league win in front of 8,278 fans at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium.

Lafayette made five trips to the Seawolves’ 21-yard-line or deeper in the first half and wound up with all of six points. With Stony Brook’s offense stuck in neutral (98 first-half yards), the Leopards could easily have led 24-0 — or more — at the half instead of being tied at 6.

“We should have been up by four touchdowns,” Lafayette coach Frank Tavani said. “I’ve been around a long time and I don’t know if I have ever seen a game like that, we were up and down the field and no touchdowns. That many times in the red zone you have to get touchdowns, every once in a while you take a field goal. But that was the game in a nutshell. We did it to ourselves.”

Given the deluge that followed the break, the Leopards needed the cushion. Stony Brook piled up 31 second-half points on 237 second-half yards — all on the ground; the Seawolves completed one pass in the entire game and wound up with 300 rushing yards — as Lafayette imploded with second-half mistakes (fumble, interception, blocked field goal) and Stony Brook’s enormous offensive line (its smallest lineman weighs 285 pounds) took control of the line of scrimmage.

But had the score been different — had the Leopards grabbed that commanding halftime lead — the Seawolves would have had to pass to rally and that seemed most unlikely to succeed given the 1-for-13 passing stats they wound up with.

“You have to run the ball and stop the run and we did neither (Lafayette finished with 86 rushing yards),” said Tavani, who was visibly unhappy with the lack of holding calls on the Seawolves’ perimeter runs. “Once they found they could run the stretch plays and get outside; then we overpursue and they hit us on the cutbacks inside.”

The master of the cutback was Seawolves’ junior running back Miguel Maysonet (22 carries, 195 yards), who tied his own Stony Brook school record for rushing touchdowns in a game with four.

In the midst of the Seawolves’ surge, Lafayette junior quarterback Andrew Shoop (32-for-56, 400 yards, 3 interceptions, 2 TDs) hit senior wide receiver Mitchell Bennett (10 catches for 135 yards, both career highs) for a 52-yard third-quarter touchdown pass and tossed a 6-yard TD strike to Mark Ross (7 catches, 92 yards) in the fourth quarter.

“It wasn’t a career night because we didn’t win,” Bennett said. “We let a couple of opportunities get away from us and we have to execute in the red zone. On the touchdown pass, in the coverage before, I saw they were jamming us deep instead of playing the ball and I thought we could go over the top and Shoop threw me the perfect ball.”

But those scores couldn’t outweigh the Leopard mistakes (five total turnovers plus a missed and a blocked field goal) and Stony Brook’s mighty ground machine.

“The mistakes (and the lack of execution in the red zone) start with me,” Shoop said. “We get down there, we have to score. We can’t leave points like that on the table, we need to finish. I need to do better and I need to step it up and make better throws. But we kept battling and kept trying to come back and we’ll build and learn from this.”

The halftime score of 6-6 flattered Stony Brook. The Leopards wound up with just one more point (six) than trips inside the Seawolves’ 21-yard line (five) despite outgaining the Seawolves 203-98. The Leopards settled for Austin O’Brien field goals of 30 and 36 on drives where they were inside the Seawolves’ 15 and missed a 42-yard field goal that followed a Mike Grimaldi interception for the Leopards at the Seawolves’ 21.

Even worse for Lafayette, they suffered two turnovers in the Stony Brook red zone. Wide receiver Jet Kollie fumbled at the Seawolves' 5 that was recovered by Davonte Anderson and Shoop, under intense pressure from blitzing safety Dan Mulrooney, threw his second interception of the half when Ryan Haber picked off a pass at the Stony Brook 5.

“I need to learn that throwing the ball away can get us a field goal,” Shoop said.

Meanwhile, Stony Brook turned a 69-yard kickoff return by Brock Jackoloski into one of its field goals and went 66 yards after Shoop’s second pick for its second field goal as time expired in the first half. It was the third time in four games that Lafayette has allowed a score right before halftime.

The second Seawolves drive was sparked by a 35-yard pass from Michael Coulter to Jordan Gush — the only completed Stony Brook pass of the half (1-for-10).

LEOPARD SPOTS: Lafayette lost senior linebacker Leroy Butler to a third-quarter concussion ... Senior Andrew Holmes underwent shoulder surgery Friday and is likely out for the season. ... Stony Brook starting right tackle Michael Bamiro is a Pocono Mountain West graduate.

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