Stonington – Thursday’s Eastern Connecticut Conference Division II boys’ soccer showdown between Stonington and Bacon Academy went about as expected.

The two evenly-matched teams played a tight, fiercely-competitive game with the outcome in doubt until final horn. Just like the first meeting.

This time, Stonington emerged with a hard-earned, confidence-boosting 1-0 victory, avenging an earlier one-goal loss.

Sophomore Landon Pelletier’s opportunistic first-half goal and senior goalie Brandon Tavares’ impressive play proved to be the difference for the Bears (10-3-3, 6-2).

“The boys knew this game meant a lot in terms of seeding in the state tournament and seedings in the ECC tournament,” Stonington coach Mario Costa said. “It’s great momentum for the boys moving forward.”

The Bobcats (11-2-2, 6-2) saw their winning streak end at nine straight. They also had something to celebrate, as coach Skip Starks informed his team that they clinched the Division II regular season title by winning the ECC’s second tiebreaker: Bacon swept third-place Ledyard while Stonington split with the Colonels.

“Both our games with Stonington this year could have gone either way for both teams,” Starks said. “We clipped them 1-0 here the first time and they got the better of us today. We made a bad giveaway and they capitalized. That’s the difference.

“When the game is tight, one mistake can do it. And that’s what happened.”

Stonington had circled Thursday’s meeting on the calendar after suffering a 1-0 overtime defeat on Oct. 8 in the first meeting. The game was moved to Stonington due to poor field conditions at Bacon.

“It was the most important game for us all season,” Tavares said.

The combination of junior Sawyer Vanlew and Pelletier produced the game-winning goal with 12 and a half minutes left in the first half.

Vanlew won possession of the ball, dribbled down the right side and sent a perfectly-placed low cross into the goal mouth where Pelletier knocked it into the corner for a 1-0 edge.

Earlier in the game, Bacon’s Dante Ricci banged a shot off the crossbar and Nico Matteucci fired just wide with Tavares bearing down on him.

Pressing for the equalizer, the Bobcats applied pressure and created several great scoring chances at the start of the second half.

Tavares and his fellow defenders met the challenge each time.

“We wanted to come out strong and we did everything that we wanted to do but he rose to the occasion,” Starks said. “Kudos to him.”

First, Tavares fought through traffic to punch away Drew Ferrigno’s long, goal-bound free kick. Then he knocked another dangerous shot over the crossbar.

Finally, the Stonington senior made an incredible reaction save, alertly leaping to tip a shot targeted for the upper part of the goal over the bar.

“I saw it at the last second pop over my defenders and I just knew I had to try and just throw myself at it,” Tavares said. “I landed on my stomach and knocked the wind out of me.”

Costa added: “He’s always got one or two of those big saves in him. Definitely a good performance from him today.”

Tavares finished with six saves.

When the game ended, Tavares pulled a piece of paper from his sock that he used as motivation. The paper contained comments made by Bacon players on social media.

“They have an Instagram account and they just were talking crap on it,” Tavares said about the Bobcats. “It was all comments. I was looking at it before the game and I put it in my sock before I went onto the field and that’s the first thing that I looked at after.”

A nice rivalry has developed between the Stonington and Bacon Academy programs.

Odds are the two teams will face each other again in the upcoming ECC tournament.

“We’re going to see them again and they’re going to see us,” Starks said. “It’s all part of the ECC when you’re at the top.”

g.keefe@theday.com