MANSFIELD, Conn. – If the Eastern Connecticut State University men's lacrosse team plans to make any noise in the Little East Conference playoffs next month, it will have to start on the road.
 
Playing against a Massachusetts Maritime Academy team with one conference win and with a chance to even its LEC record and move within a game of fourth place and a first-round LEC home match, Eastern was instead overwhelmed by the Buccaneers, 18-7, Wednesday afternoon at Rick McCarthy Field.
 
Mass Maritime (5-6, 2-3 LEC), which eliminated Eastern (5-9, 2-4 LEC) by ten goals in the first round of last year's LEC tournament, ran off the final five goals of the first half and first three of the second half Wednesday to build a ten-goal lead and drop Eastern into sixth place in the nine-team conference. The top six teams qualify for the conference tournament, with the first two gaining first round byes and the next two hosting the No. 5 and No. 6 seeds, respectively, in first-round matchups.
 
With top scorer Brycen Kennedy (Southington) out with injury, five of Eastern's remaining six double-digit scorers were held to one goal on ten shots. Only senior Garrett Lapham (Trumbull) was a factor as he scored three goals and took nearly one-third of the team's shots.
 
Bright spots for the Warriors included senior goalie Nick Collazo (Park Ridge, NJ), senior defenseman Ryan Stocks (Longmeadow, MA) and sophomore faceoff specialist Rick O'Neal (East Hartford). Collazo became the 21^st goalie in program history to stop at least 20 shots in a game as he turned back a career-high 21, 15 in the first half when the Bucs outshot the Warriors, 33-14. Stocks picked up eight ground balls to improve his season total to a team-high 75 and also caused three turnovers. O'Neal won ten of 19 attempts at the faceoff X to improve his season percentage to 52.4, picking up five ground balls in the process.
 
Senior Mitchell Maida and junior linemate Jack Iversen controlled the game for the Bucs, Maida scoring six goals with two assists and Iversen collecting nine assists and a goal.
With the victory, the Bucs ended a three-game losing streak, winning for only the second time in their last eight games. The team's previous three losses, however, had come against the top teams in the conference, two of the losses by a total of three goals.
 
Eastern visits defending LEC playoff champion Massachusetts Boston Saturday at 1 p.m. and closes out the regular season in LEC play at home against the University of Southern Maine April 28.