Box Score  

MANSFIELD, Conn. – The Eastern Connecticut State University field hockey team broke a tie  early in the second half and tacked on a much-needed insurance goal 87 seconds  later in remaining the only undefeated team in the Little East Conference with a 3-2 victory over Western Connecticut State University Tuesday afternoon at Rick McCarthy Field.

The win is Eastern's (9-7, 4-0 LEC) fourth straight and moves it to within one of tying the program's regular-season win streak of five set four years ago during the LEC championship season. The Warriors won for the fourth time in the last five meetings in the all-time series and bounced back from a 3-2 road loss last year to the Wolves – WestConn breaking a tie with the game-winning goal with nine minutes left -- during a season which produced only two LEC wins in six games.

The Warriors continue their quest for the LEC regular-season title and first-ever No. 1 playoff seed when they close out the LEC season with two matches – this Saturday at Plymouth State University (5-7, 1-1 LEC) and next Saturday, Nov. 1 at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (2-13, 0-4 LEC). The LEC playoffs get underway with two first-round matches Nov. 4, with the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds earning byes into the semifinals No. 6. The title game is scheduled for Nov. 8 (all games are played at the site of the higher-seeded team), with the winner gaining an automatic berth in the NCAA Division III tournament.

The Warriors have never gone undefeated in the LEC. However, the conference is playing a six-game schedule for only the third year after playing between ten and 12 regular-season LEC matches for 22 consecutive seasons when the conference was combined with the Mass State College Athletic Conference (MASCAC).

Plymouth leads the all-time series, 25-6, but the Warriors have won five of the last nine against the Panthers, most recently by a 1-0 score in overtime last year at Rick McCarthy Field in the final regular-season game of the season which provided the Warriors with a first-round LEC playoff home match. UMass Dartmouth is 18-9 all-time against Eastern and has won by 2-1 scores each of the last two years, but the Warriors are 5-3 vs. the Corsairs in the last eight encounters.

The conference loss Tuesday was WestConn's (6-8, 1-3 LEC) third straight and snaps an overall two-game win streak against non-conference opponents.

Eastern first-year forward Mackenzie Ray (Grantham, NH) and WestConn scoring leader Reagan Schoen traded goals roughly a minute apart – Ray's second of the year coming with 15.5 seconds left in the first quarter and Schoen's eighth evening the match less than a minutes into the second.

The Warriors had an offensive surge over the final three minutes of the first half – and did not surrender their first penalty corner until just 3:33 remained in the half – but had to settle for a 1-1 halftime tie.

Eastern finally broke through with a dominant third quarter when it scored on two of its four shots and limited the Wolves to only one shot over those 15 minutes. Sophomore Rebecca Minaya (Stafford) gave Eastern the lead for good, 2-1 on junior Grace Barlage's (Guilford) team-leading seventh assist five minutes into the third quarter, and sophomore Audrey Molin (Vernon) – who assisted on Ray's opening salvo -- gave the Warriors some breathing room with her ninth goal of the season – one shy of the team leader –on a pass from junior Betsy Davis (Enfield) just over a minute later.

Trailing 3-1 with 24 minutes left in the match, WestConn made a push to tie it, getting one back on Jaelyn Moulton's re-direct five minutes into the fourth quater and maintaining the momentum throughout much of the remainder of the match. Needing one to tie, the Wolves nearly did that but Cassidy Nordmann's re-direct in front of the Eastern cage with six minutes sailed wide. The Warriors were able to hold off WestConn's aggressive bid to gain the equalizer the rest of the way.

Eastern senior Hannah Jalowiec (Cheshire) made four saves – all coming on seven WestConn second-quarter shots – to win her fourth straight start and improve to 6-2 this season.

While national goal-scoring leader Grace Bazin of Keene State College leads the LEC with 32, Eastern players fill in right behind her. Senior Emma Sanson (Thomaston) has ten, and Molin and Barlage nine each. The trio has combined to score 28 of the team's 40 goals and compile 67 of its 107 points.