Colchester — There's been perhaps a longer learning curve than usual for the Bacon Academy boys' lacrosse team this year after graduating four All-State players while starting several sophomores and freshmen.

Among the things the Bobcats have learned about themselves of late — that they can play a pretty good zone defense.

Bacon put up zone against Stonington on a gusty Monday afternoon and slowed the Bears enough to win, 9-7, and give itself the lead in the Eastern Connecticut Conference's Division II title race.

"Stonington can shoot," Bobcats head coach Brian Martin said. "They have some really good players that you game plan against but we knew we had a good goalie that could stop the shots (sophomore Chase Goulet). We were just kind of hoping to play good defense around him. ... and we wanted to give Stonington the low-percentage shots to give (him) a chance."

"We played Somers (Saturday) and their offense was very fast so we ended up putting in a zone there and we slowed them down a little bit and the kids played it really well."

Somers won that game, 14-6. It has been one of the state's most consistent small-school programs.

The Bears averaged 13.5 goals in their four previous divisional games.

"Let's see how they can do against a zone and it was something good because we hadn't shown it to any ECC team," Martin continued, "so it kind of caught them off-guard. It took them a little while to crack it (and) we wanted to keep the score low."

Goulet had 15 saves for Bacon (6-4, 4-0) and junior Gavin Emmons scored three times.

Senior Tyler Daniels added a goal and two assists, senior Sam Blumberger and freshman Ethan LoVetere scored twice and junior Jack Holmes had a goal and an assist for the Bobcats.

Junior Cam Elenteny had three goals and two assists for Stonington (6-5, 4-1) and sophomore Tyler Simao scored twice. Juniors Ben French and Ben Massengale both scored and senior Will Banfield had 12 saves.

Bacon scored four straight times to go ahead, 4-1, with 9 minutes, 12 seconds left in the first half. Blumberger scored the last two of those goals, the first after making two sweet spin moves around defenders.

Daniels and LoVetere both scored in the final six minutes to give the Bobcats a 6-2 halftime lead.

Massengale scored with 6:05 left in the game to cut Stonington's deficit to 8-6 but the Bears could get no closer.

"We were a little slow holding the ball," Bears head coach Conor Doyle said. "(We were) not getting back on defense. ... (We had) two shots that rattled off the pipes in the fourth quarter. The game comes down to inches.

"Massengale hit the goaltender in the top of the head. An inch off, that's in the back of the net. Those little things will kill you at the end of the day, especially against a good team like Bacon."

n.griffen@theday.com