MANSFIELD, Conn. – Saturday afternoon's Little East Conference field hockey match between Eastern Connecticut State University and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth blew a huge hole in the theory that statistics don't lie.
 
In UMass Dartmouth's 2-1 overtime victory, they did. Quite badly.
 
The reward for Eastern's (2-7-1, 0-1 LEC) 23-4 advantage in shots and whopping 19-1 advantage in penalty corners was an overtime loss to UMass Dartmouth (3-7, 1-2 LEC) in a match where the Corsairs scored the first goal of the match on their only penalty corner of the afternoon, then emerged with the victory with their only shot in overtime.
 
In losing its Little East opener, Eastern dropped its fourth straight – second in that stretch in overtime – while the Corsairs won for the first time in their last four outings.
 
In a battle of two teams which did not qualify for last year's conference tournament, UMass snapped an overall two-game losing streak at the hands of Eastern and recorded its first win at Rick McCarthy Field since 2014 – a streak of three straight losses.
 
Saturday, freshman Sam King scored both of UMass's goals which came on the team's only shots which reached net. The game-winner came  8:40 into sudden-death overtime on a breakaway where she was able to ward off Eastern defender Leah Kowalasky (Middlebury)  and poke it through the five-hold of Eastern sophomore goalie Hannah Jalowiec (Cheshire).
 
Eastern had flat-out dominated the second half and overtime, outshooting the Corsairs 19-3 and amassing a (largely unproductive) total of 15 penalty corners. In the fourth quarter and overtime, UMass junior goalie Hannah Trombly stoned Eastern by making eight of her nine saves (Maggie McCafferty also recorded a defensive save on Kowalasky's drive five minutes into the second quarter of a scoreless game). Until the game-winning goal, Eastern spent the entire 6v6 overtime period in its own offensive end, recording five shots and six penalty corners.  Five minutes into OT, Trombly denied Eastern first-year forward Grace Barlage (Guilford) on consecutive shots. Three minutes into overtime, Eastern junior Liz LaMarco (West Hartford) inserted a penalty corner, then received a return pass and threaded a dangerous cross from the left through the crease, which was untouched by her teammates. After four more penalty corners produced nothing,

Barlage had another opportunity with under two minutes left that ran wide right and set the stage for UMass' winning goal. On a re-start after the missed shot, Sophia Bouffard sent the ball down the middle of the field with a hard pass to Maggie Doherty near midfield. Doherty handled the ball briefly and sent it ahead to an unmarked King, who carried inside the circle and while protecting the ball from Kowalasky's reach, poked it between the pads of Jalowiec and inside the right corner of the cage to end the game.
 
Off junior Harley Hodge's penalty corner, King tipped in a shot from junior teammate Jenna Carvalho that initially came from senior Maggie Doherty  that broke a stalemate and lifted UMass into a 1-0 lead with 69 seconds left in the third quarter.
 
With UMass clinging to its 1-0 lead, Trombly made six saves on eight shots in the fourth quarter –two of the save coming consecutively by sophomore Emma Sanson (Thomaston) and another by Kowalasky – to keep the lead intact until the Warriors finally broke through with six minutes left. With time running out, Eastern evened the score on first-year player Betsy Davis' (Enfield) third goal of the year when she tipped in senior  Kowalasky's  hard drove from inside the circle with six minutes left. Eastern was able to force overtime despite playing a man down for two minutes in the final minutes of regulation.
 
Sanson and Barlage combined for 11 shots, forcing Trombly to kick away four of them
 
Eastern visits the University of Southern Maine in a conference match Saturday at no