BOSTON – Senior forward Mariah Dunn (Meriden) equalled her season scoring high in the first half and the Eastern Connecticut State University women's basketball team outscored the University of Massachusetts Boston 30-7 to build a 20-point lead early in the fourth quarter and went on to a 54-36 victory in the Little East Conference opener for both teams Saturday afternoon at the Clark Athletic Center.
 
Trailing by three, Eastern (5-3) closed the first half on an 8-2 run, limiting the Beacons to 12 total points in the middle two quarters, and outscoring the Beacons, 30-7 in a stretch of 18 minutes to amass a 20-point lead in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter.
 
Leading by three at halftime, Eastern used a 19-point third quarter – helped when the Beacons missed their first nine shots and turned the ball over once on their first ten possessions of the second – to take a 17-point, 42-25 lead into the final quarter.
 
A first-year starter, Dunn was 7-of-9 from the floor and led all players with 15 points in the first half. Senior All-America forward Anna Barry (Andover), who managed just four points in the first half, took over in the second half, scoring ten points in the third quarter to spark the Warriors.
 
The lead crested at 21 points, 51-30, on Dunn's conventional three-point play with five minutes left in the game as the Warriors won for the eighth straight time against UMass Boston (5-3).
 
UMass Boston, which features nine freshmen on its roster (only one of whom starts), lost its first home game in four outings. The Beacons entered play averaging 68 points per game but shot just 19.0 percent from the floor and were 1-of-16 from distance.
 
 First-team All-LEC graduate forward Meg Dixon, UMB's season scoring leader at 18.1 ppg., was limited to just seven points on 2-of-12 shooting from the floor. Six-foot junior transfer Alexah Potter led UMB  with 12 points, nine rebounds and five blocked shots in 26 minutes.
 
Dunn led all scorers with a career-high 23 points (9-of-13 from the floor) and a career-high nine rebounds in 31 minutes while Barry followed with 18 points (14 in the second half) on 8-of-15 shooting. She also had eight rebounds and blocked three shots. No other Eastern played had more than four points.
 
Eastern visits the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in an LEC game Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.