BOSTON — After losing six in a row, most recently to the top-seeded College of Charleston Cougars on Friday night and sat at the bottom of the CAA standings, the Huskies had their work cut out for them on a Sunday afternoon in the Cabot Center against second-in-conference Stony Brook.
Coming into the preseason poll ranked second to last above Northeastern, the Seawolves have taken the league by storm with a 9-2 record in conference play and entered Sunday winners of nine out of their last ten.
The Huskies and Seawolves met just last week in Stony Brook, when Northeastern was unable to pull off the comeback after a 26-point third quarter pulled them within four and Stony Brook held on in a 64-55 win.
On Sunday, the first quarter was spearheaded by Northeastern guard Nariyah Simmons on offense and defense, with the graduate student tallying two threes and three steals throughout the opening frame as the Huskies took an 18-13 lead. However, Simmons’ third foul in the second quarter put her in foul trouble and was subbed out shortly after for the remainder of the half.
“Nariyah [Simmons] is a very aggressive player by nature and depending on how the game’s being called sometimes it takes a little while to adjust from that,” said Northeastern head coach Priscilla Edwards-Lloyd.
Meanwhile, sophomore guard Camryn Collins and sophomore forward Justice Tramble stepped up in a big way, combining for 11 points in the second quarter and going on a 11-1 run into the halftime break. Tramble even hit her first three-pointer of her career from the top of the key, bringing the Northeastern bench and Cabot faithful to their feet with a 35-26 lead at halftime.
The Collins-Tramble duo continued in the third quarter, combining for 14 points, but a layup from junior Stony Brook guard Janay Brantley cut the Huskies’ lead down to six, the slimmest margin of the quarter. To open things back up, Northeastern went on an 8-2 run to end the frame, which was highlighted by a buzzer-beating corner three from Huskies freshman guard Beatriz Pérez Pulgar, her first points since Dec. 3 vs. UMass.
When the final buzzer sounded, the Cabot crowd was sent into a raucous: their first home win in over a month — when the Huskies took down Monmouth Jan. 11 — but more importantly their third conference win this season, surpassing the win total from the 2024-25 season.
“We’ve been talking all week about having confidence in ourselves, in our offensive and defensive ability, [and] we showed that today,” said head coach Priscilla Edwards-Lloyd. “Obviously, we’ve had some games that have been tough, but [with] the way we played Charleston [on Friday] in the first half, we talked about being able to carry over some of that focus and that aggressiveness and some of that poise and do it for 40 minutes.”
Collins led all Huskies in scoring with 21 points, shooting 78% from the field, and Tramble had 15 points and seven rebounds. On the other hand for Stony Brook, only six Seawolves registered points in the box score, with Brantley leading with 26 points.
The Northeastern Huskies will look to build on this momentum when they take on North Carolina A&T down in Greensboro, N.C. Friday night at 7 p.m.
Daniel Ku is a third-year student at Northeastern University, covering Northeastern sports since 2024. Read all of his articles here.