BIDDEFORD —The University of New England and the University of Southern Maine men’s lacrosse teams seemed to be heading for tight battle early in their matchup on Monday afternoon.

The two clubs were tied 2-2 late in the first quarter, but UNE would catch fire and score 13 unanswered goals to secure a dominant 15-3 win over the rival Huskies.

“We’ve had a slow start like that in four of our games. We haven’t quite figured out how to get out of the first quarter, once we get to the second quarter we start clicking but it’s been a slow start,” said UNE coach Charlie Burch of his team’s slow first period.

The final three quarters were anything but slow for the Nor’easters. UNE would take a 3-2 lead into the second quarter, outpace the Huskies 12-1 the rest of the way, and shut out USM until the final minute of regulation.

UNE led 5-2 in the second, and the offense would take off and score four goals in the final 3:05 of the half to make the score 9-2 at the break and put the game out of reach.

The Nor’easters added three more goals in both the third and fourth to close out the win.

Mitch Mullin led UNE with four goals, while Garett Bozek, Zach Bossi, Alec Beveridge and Alex Zadworny added two apiece. Sean McCarthy, Andrew Markham and Adam Race each chipped in a goal as well. Zadworny led UNE with five assists while Bozek recorded three.

Nate DelGiudice, Seth Wing and Paul Leonardo scored goals for the Huskies in the loss.

The UNE defense also had an impressive outing, holding USM to just 12 shots on goal. Starting goalie Tyler Nevers made eight stops in the cage for the Nor’easters.

“We’re playing a zone right now that’s working very well. The guys have gotten more comfortable with it and they’ve picked up the rotation, how we cover guys on the inside,” said Burch. “It’s a new defense this year a little bit and the guys are getting more and more comfortable with it all the time.”

This is UNE’s ninth straight victory over rival USM, who last beat the Nor’easters in 2009. Burch and company enjoyed participating in the rivalry, and using homefield advantage to their benefit.

“It’s a good inner-state rivalry, we play them in all sports. It’s a good healthy rivalry, but we don’t like each other very much … that’s always cause for intense games,” said Burch. “Unfortunately for USM they don’t get their field plowed, we do get our field plowed, so I think that gives us an advantage when we have them early in the season.”

The Nor’easters improve to 3-1 on the year, and Burch is happy with the progress his club has made early in the season.

“We’re pretty happy with where we are,” said Burch. “The offense needs to be more consistent for four quarters, defense is playing well, we’re getting good goaltending, faceoff guys are coming along. We’re 3-1 and we feel pretty good about that.”

UNE will next take on Lasell at Johns Hopkins on Friday evening.

— Associate Sports Editor Alex Sponseller can be reached at asponseller@journaltribune.com or at 282-1535 ext. 323. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @JournalTsports.

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