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[I thought he was stopped by a couple of students who happened to be riding their bikes nearby?]

There’s an element of he said-they said here. The guy and the girl walked together to where they ended up. He might have been touching her to see if she would wake up. When the passers-by shouted rape, he might have run off out of sheer panic. Innocent or not, being accused of rape is life-altering, and he might have run to avoid the charge altogether. The Duke lacrosse team members are probably still living under a cloud, despite having been exonerated. And even they went through a real meat grinder of negative publicity and huge legal bills before they were cleared.

The guy was a champion athlete, they went to the same school, they were part of the same social milieu and the hookup culture isn’t some of kind of other-worldly thing. I’m not surprised the judge imposed a short sentence. The guy’s already branded a sex offender and a felon.

Here’s the New York Times on the sentence for groping:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/us/politics/donald-trump-has-been-accused-of-groping-but-what-does-the-law-say.html
{What kind of punishment can stem from a groping conviction?

In New York, “forcible touching” is a Class A misdemeanor, meaning it carries a sentence of up to a year of incarceration or three years of probation, and a $1,000 fine. In Florida, battery is a first-degree misdemeanor, which carries a sentence of up to a year in jail, and a $1,000 fine.}