Old Westbury, N.Y. — The NYIT men's lacrosse team is ticketed for a very meaningful Battle of the Boulevard.

The top-seeded Bears defeated fourth-seeded Molloy, 12-6, in an East Coast Conference semifinal on Wednesday at President's Stadium to set up a game against the second-seeded Pioneers for the league's postseason title.

The teams will square off on Saturday at 3 p.m. at President's Stadium.

LIU Post defeated third-seeded Mercy, 19-7, earlier Wednesday in the other semifinal.

NYIT topped the Pioneers, 11-7, on April 21 in Old Westbury en route to a second straight unbeaten ECC regular-season title.

"The Battle of the Boulevard is always something for the fans to talk about," coach Bill Dunn said. "We have a lot of matchups within the game — their big attackman, No. 10, William Snelders, against Nick Deluca. The second one will be Shlomo Amar with the faceoffs with Connor Farrell. There will be a couple of others, but that's what really stood out the first time."

Against Molloy, Michael Trainor scored four goals and LeRoy Halftown, Matt Murphy and Andrew Zito had two apiece.

NYIT built an 8-2 lead on Murphy's goal with 2 minutes, 50 seconds remaining in the second quarter. Molloy clawed no closer than four goals the rest of the afternoon.

The Bears, who are ranked eighth in the USILA coaches poll and fourth in the North Region, improved to 12-4 overall. They have won 10 straight games.

NYIT won last year's ECC postseason title on Tom Hughes' sudden-death overtime goal against Mercy.

"We always ask the team to come back a year better," Dunn said. "And for us to come back better this year, we have to win the conference championship again, and hopefully get the bid to the NCAAs. Just to be in the championship game again, the way our season started out, I spoke to the team before the game and told them I was really proud of them. They battled through the adversity of losing three games in a row early in the season. Now we're on a 10-game winning streak. Hopefully it'll be 11 after Saturday."

Provided by the NYIT Sports Information Department.