Warriors end skid with drubbing of Salem State in LEC opener

MANSFIELD — On a cold, wet Saturday afternoon, Eastern Connecticut State men’s lacrosse team finally got a little ray of sunshine after three straight games of dreariness.

Three players scored three goals apiece and the Warriors opened Little East Conference men’s lacrosse play with an 18-1 win over Salem State from Rick McCarthy Field. ECSU has yet to lose to the Vikings in nine meetings.

“It’s the first league game and we’ve been on a losing streak so it was important that we got this game,” said Warriors head coach Marc Graham. “First home game of the season so all of those things combined it was an important day for us.

“We’ve been a little down the past couple of games so to start off in the conference 1-0 is a really important way to start.”

The Warriors, who have spent the first month of the season away from Rick McCarthy Field, with five of the six games out of the state of Connecticut, scored within the first two minutes of the game when Brycen Kennedy got an unassisted goal to put the Warriors up 1-0. Kennedy scored his second goal of the contest from an assist by Domenic Scarano with 9:39 left in the first period to give the Warriors the 2-0 advantage.

Tim Lichack scored three goals in the first and when the period ended, the Warriors (3-4, 1-0 LEC) led 7-0.

The half ended with the Warriors leading 10-1.

Kennedy upped his goal total to 15 for the season. Warren Channing had three goals — his goal with 1:38 in the first period was one of Kennedy’s three assists for the game — was ECSU’s seventh for the game. Channing also added goals in the second period (assisted by Scarano) and in the third (assisted by Mitchell Bagcal) for ECSU’s ninth and 10th goals for the game. Channing also had an assist.

Sophomore Jason Ioli scored three of the Warriors final four goals of the match, giving him his first three goals of his Warriors career. Ioli’s back-to-back goals less than a minute apart in the fourth period got the bench off their feet.

“Jason is a great kid and he does a really great job in practice every day. We can’t do what we do at practice without guys like Jason so when gets in have some success the guys are really happy for him,”

Graham said.

Goalkeeper Nick Collazo played the entire 60 minutes and finished with two saves for the Warriors.

“We needed our guys to

play together a little bit better,” Graham began about what he wanted to see from the team coming into Saturday’s game after

losing the previous three, including a 17-0 shutout to Farmingdale back on March 16 and an 11-point loss in their previous outing this past Wednesday.

“We were letting things get a bit individualized. And we’re not playing together, we’re not as strong as we can be so today was important that we share the ball a lot better than we have been and then defensively we stepped up and winning face offs were huge for us.”

The Warriors won the face offs component 17-4 and outshot Salem State 62-4.

Lake Fleming’s second period goal was the lone score for the Vikings (1-6, 0-1).

“It’s always good to be 1-0 in the conference. And that’s what I told our guys, we’ve played some tough games early and while they all count and they all matter, when we get into conference play that’s when it really becomes important so to start out 1-0 is great,” Graham said.

The Warriors will be back on the road for the next two, Wednesday at Clark University and next Saturday at Keene State College for another LEC matchup before returning to Rick McCarthy Field on April 5 against Wheaton College for a 7 p.m. opening faceoff.