MANSFIELD, Conn. – Senior All-America Morgan Bolduk (Vernon) pitched her fifth consecutive career shutout in the Little East Conference softball tournament as top-seeded Eastern Connecticut State University moved to within a victory of its third straight LEC tournament championship, 4-0, over third-seeded University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Friday morning at Clyde Washburne Field.
 
The win is the 20^th straight this year and tenth in a row over three years in the tournament for No. 4 nationally-ranked Eastern (36-4), which advances to Saturday's championship round against UMass Darmouth (33-9-1), which stayed alive to move into the finals for the first time with a 4-0 win over fourth-seeded Castleton University late Friday.
 
The teams will meet at 3:30 p.m. Saturday, with a UMass Dartmouth win extending the tournament to a final game beginning at  6 p.m.
 

Bolduk (11-1), who pitched four straight shutout wins in the 2019 championship tournament, fired a one-hitter Friday with seven strikeouts and one walk for her  eighth straight win this year. Bolduk retired the first ten batters she faced before Leah Major singled with one out in the fourth. With Eastern leading 3-0, Major reached third on a steal and wild pitch before Bolduk got No. 3 hitter Lindsay Chubbuck on strikes to end the threat.
                                          
An infield error and senior Carolyn Biel's (Wallingford) one-out RBI single staked Bolduk to a 2-0 lead in the second, senior Julia SanGiovanni's (East Haven) team-leading 16^th double of the year (she would add a second double later in the game) starting the rally. Junior Alyssa Vilchez's (Brampton, ON) RBI single making it 3-0 in the third and senior All-America Brooke Matyasovsky's (Orange) 15^th double of the year plating senior Alexis Tyrrell (Torrington) with the final run in the sixth.
 
UMass senior ace Jill Richards (16-5) went the distance but surrendered 12 hits. She fanned two and walked one. Matyasovsky went over the 50-hit mark on the season with three hits and SanGiovanni also exceeded that milestone with two., with Tyrrell and Vilchez adding two each, as well.
 
In Eastern's ten straight LEC tournament wins, seven have come by shutout.

When Eastern swept UMass Dartmouth in the regular season a month ago on the road, Bolduk also pitched a complete-game, 4-0 shutout in the opener while sophomore Alexis Michon (Montville) followed with a complete-game 5-1 win. Michon (18-1) and Bolduk opened the tournament for Eastern Thursday by combining on a five-hit, 6-0 win over fourth-seeded Castleton University.