WILLIMANTIC, Conn. – Junior guard Tarchee Brown (Rockville) scored a season-high 33 points as the Eastern Connecticut State University men's basketball team extended its Little East Conference regular-season home unbeaten streak to 30 with an 85-66 victory over the University of Massachusetts Boston which made the Warriors the top seed in the LEC tournament for the fourth straight season Saturday afternoon at Francis E. Geissler Gymnasium.

At left: Seniors (from left) David Canny, Brandon Kuczenski and Hugh Lindo and their families were honored on Seniors' Day Saturday.

Eastern (17-8, 11-3 LEC) hosts eighth-seeded Western Connecticut State University in a first-round tournament game Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at Geissler Gym. A first-round win Tuesday will make Eastern the host for the semifinals and final Friday and Saturday.

UMass Boston (13-12, 6-8 LEC) finishes with a share of fourth place with Plymouth State University and due to tiebreakers will unofficially be the No. 5 seed, visiting Plymouth State Tuesday in a first-round game.

Eastern never trailed in the game Saturday, opening up a ten-point lead seven minutes into the contest, leading by 11 at halftime and finally pulling away with a 15-4 run in the second half that upped an 11-point lead to 22, 79-57, with three minutes left.

Brown, who holds program game records for points (44) and three-point field goals (10), scored 25 points in the second half on 8-of-10 shooting (5-of-5 from three-point range) en route to his game-high total. In the game, the LEC's third-leading scorer was 10-of-17, 7-of-9 from long range. He also had seven rebounds.

In the team's 18th straight win over UMass Boston, senior center David Canny (Torrington) had 14 points on 7-of-9 field goals, four rebounds and two blocks, sophomore guard Tyrell Arnum (Bloomfield) 11 points and five assists (four of them to an unmarked Canny underneath) and freshman point guard Carlos Gonzalez (Springfield, MA) ten points and eight assists. Senior forward Hugh Lindo (Enfield) shared game-high honors with ten rebounds and also had eight points and two blocks.

UMass Boston senior forward Sam Freeman, the LEC's fifth-leading scorer, carried the Beacons with 21 points on 9-of-13 shooting and shared game-high rebounding honors with Lindo with ten. Freshman guard Alex Sanchez had ten points in 16 minutes off the bench for UMB, sinking six of eight fre throws.

Trailing by nine points with just over eight minutes left in the first half, UMB countered with six straight points to make it a three-point game before the Warriors answered with their own eight-point rush that returned the lead to double figures, 34-23, with 3:30 left in the half. In that stretch, Arnum converted his only three-point attempt of the game, Gonzalez sank a jumper and Canny later dropped in a layup on a pass from junior guard Kendal Marquez (Willimantic). On six possessions during that drought, UMass missed three shots and turned the ball over three times.

The LEC's top defensive team, Eastern limited UMB to 37.5 percent shooting from the floor (0-of-16 from three-point range) while connecting on 57.1 percent of their own shots – its second-best percentage this year. The Warriors were 8-of-11 from three-point range.

The Beacons equaled the Warriors' rebound total of 37 and outscored Eastern 22-4 on second-chance points by more than doubling the host's offensive rebound total.

After winning its final two LEC regular-season home games in 2013, Eastern has won all seven of its LEC regular-season home games over a four-year period.