Jenkins’ explosion gives Stony Brook second-half life to upend Hofstra for Long Island bragging rights

Jahlil Jenkins scored 17 of game-high 24 points after halftime as Stony Brook overcame early deficit to defeat Hofstra. (Photo by Bob Dea/Daly Dose Of Hoops)

STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Moments like Wednesday’s second half were exactly what Geno Ford signed up for when he plucked Jahlil Jenkins out of the transfer portal in the offseason.

The all-Northeast Conference point guard at Fairleigh Dickinson was heralded as a coup of sorts when he arrived in Suffolk County last summer, shortly after Stony Brook also scored the return of Elijah Olaniyi from Miami. It was only a matter of time before Jenkins proved his talent on his new stage.

Consider Wednesday his coming-out party.

With Stony Brook trailing local rival Hofstra by eight points early in the second half, Jenkins took matters into his own hands, erupting for the last 10 points in a 21-4 run that flipped the script of a game that looked like a seesaw battle into total domination as the Seawolves used that outburst to drive away to a convincing 79-62 victory over the Pride at Island Federal Arena, the first for Stony Brook in the annual series since 2015, when a squad coached by Steve Pikiell and led by Jameel Warney went on to the NCAA Tournament.

“He was so good tonight, just so good,” a candid Ford assessed as Jenkins sparked a run that was, in essence, a polar opposite from the Seawolves’ prior effort, a 29-point loss to Wagner last Saturday. “I don’t even know how he got through some of those cracks. He was dribbling the ball like, 19 times to get through two guys, it was so fast you can hardly see it, and then he was finishing around the rim, he made all his free throws, he stuck big threes, and then he was able to get in the lane and get some assists. The combinations look right when your point guard plays at such an elite level.”

“We started slow, so Coach wanted us to keep being aggressive,” Jenkins said of a final 20 minutes in which he amassed 17 of his team and game-best 24 points. “Tonight, you saw how we could get hot and then on the defensive end, be really good.”

Stony Brook (4-4) found itself on the short end of a track meet in the opening minutes, as Hofstra benefited from the faster tempo to forge ahead and then hold the host Seawolves at bay before slowing the game down in the latter stages of the opening stanza, finding an answer for almost every rally to maintain a three-point halftime lead that extended to eight out of the intermission. But as Stony Brook made its game-changing run, the Pride (5-5) was unable to find a consistent rhythm on offense or the boards, ultimately being outrebounded by a decisive 54-33 margin and leaving Speedy Claxton at a crossroads when diagnosing the problems that befell his team.

“I don’t know if we got tired, (but) we just didn’t have it tonight on either end,” he lamented. “We missed shots, we weren’t defending. You can’t play the game like this. This game honors toughness, and we had no toughness tonight whatsoever.”

On the other side of that coin, toughness was central to the message on the opposing bench after a flat showing Saturday, as Stony Brook was called upon to demonstrate a heightened fortitude, and — in the wake of a 46-point improvement — did exactly that as Tyler Stephenson-Moore tallied 14 points and 12 rebounds alongside Jenkins, while Frankie Policelli battled illness to add 12 points off the bench as the Seawolves picked up a resounding statement victory without Olaniyi, who missed his fifth consecutive game due to a leg injury, with no present timetable for his return.

“We really appealed to guys’ toughness levels the past several days,” Ford admitted. “That’s all we talked about, being tough. It wasn’t a ton of great strategy, it was mental guys just fighting through it and wanting to walk out of here feeling proud of the effort that they put forward. They all can definitely do that after today, that’s for sure.”