Mohegan — The defense was already in 15 goals worth of trouble Sunday afternoon when the game hit sudden-death overtime.

That it went down as a loss for the New England Black Wolves made coach Glenn Clark even more irritated.

“Let's not kid ourselves,” Clark said. “There were way too many mistakes defensively. I'm putting this on them. We were horrible on D. Putting it on a play in overtime is too easy. It's inexcusable. It's beyond words that you could let that happen.”

The official end came when Mitch de Snoo of the Buffalo Bandits intercepted a Black Wolves pass in overtime and raced the length of the floor to score against Wolves' goalie Evan Kirk, giving the Bandits a 16-15 victory before 5,381 fans at Mohegan Sun Arena.

It started well before that, however, as the Black Wolves, who led 8-5 in the third quarter, began what Clark believed to be a defensive meltdown.

Buffalo scored four straight goals to lead 9-8 after three quarters.

The Bandits remained in the lead 10-9 when what should have been a turning point for New England, a five-minute major assessed to Buffalo's Mark Steenhuis for an elbow to the chin of Zac Reid, morphed into a disaster.

After New England's Kevin Crowley scored the game-tying goal to make it 10-10, the Black Wolves gave up two straight shorthanded goals in a 12-second span. The first came from Dhane Smith, who bowled over two defenders, and the second belonged to defender Steve Priolo, who scored on a rebound directly in front of Kirk to make it 12-10.

It was the second one which sent Clark over the edge.

“How we let a guy stand in the crease, pick up a rebound and have time to make a move … I could have checked him from the bench,” Clark said. “… They've got to make decisions — we can't puppeteer them from the bench — or they can't play in this league. It was the polar opposite from Friday.”

The Black Wolves (3-5) had the opportunity to get to the .500 mark for the season with a victory, as well as burying Buffalo (2-5) in last place in the National Lacrosse League's East Division. The Wolves won at Buffalo 14-11 Friday and showed marked improvement on defense, according to Clark.

Sunday, Clark told his offense that for whatever reason it was going to have to carry the load.

Shawn Evans responded with six goals and six assists. Crowley had three goals and four assists for his third straight hat trick (after going scoreless for three quarters) and Kevin Buchanan had two goals and seven assists.

The Black Wolves trailed 13-11 with 9 minutes, 28 seconds left, but fought back to tie on a pair of goals by Crowley. Blaze Riorden for Buffalo and Evans for New England, knocked off his feet but scoring as he fell, traded goals to make it 14-14.

Riorden scored again with 1:51 to play for a 15-14 Buffalo lead, but the Wolves managed to force overtime when Evans stole a clearing pass and dished to Kevin Buchanan for another game-tying goal with 1:10 remaining in regulation.

“Every little mistake you make, it ends up in the back of the net,” Evans said of the loss. “You have to play a full 60 minutes. Sometimes it doesn't happen. It's definitely emotional more when we thought we had the game. He picked up the ball and had a breakaway we weren't expecting.”

Kirk faced 63 shots on goal for the Wolves and made 47 saves, saving 29 of 33 in the first half when New England led 6-4.

Smith had four goals for Buffalo.

v.fulkerson@theday.com