Mohegan — Jeff Bernardi told his upstart East Lyme boys’ basketball team that they’d win Tuesday night’s Eastern Connecticut Conference Division I tournament title if they scored fifty.

The Vikings just missed.

But they didn’t even need to score 40 to win.

Sixth-seeded East Lyme hustled and hassled fourth-seeded Waterford from the jump and used a pivotal third-quarter run by tournament MVP Riley Walsh to finish their wild ride through the tournament with a 48-35 win before close to 3,000 at Mohegan Sun Arena.

It was the eighth straight win for the Vikings (15-8).

To think that they were 7-8 after a 61-50 loss to Norwich Free Academy on Feb. 3.

“Defense won this game,” Bernardi said. “Yes, we had 48 points but how many points did we score off of defensive stops and turnovers and transition?

“Our calling card was establish the tone with your defense and to turn your defense into offense and tonight was just picture perfect.”

Walsh, a senior, scored 10 of his game-high 15 points during a late third quarter run for the Vikings.

Senior Will Anglin (10 points, six rebounds, four steals) and junior Gavin O’Brien (11 points) joined Walsh on the all-tournament team.

“We’re nitty-gritty,” Walsh said. “We’re sound. We trust each other for sure. We know that if someone is going by (us) that there’s going to be someone on help defense and honestly, (senior) Rowan (Mundell) and Will are the two dogs of the defense. They’re insane defenders and we kind of rely on them.”

Seniors Sean O’Connell (nine points, seven rebounds) and Jordan Elci (six points) both made the all-tournament team for Waterford (17-6), and junior Logan Peabody added 10 points.

The Lancers beat the Vikings in their only regular season meeting (36-32, Jan. 25).

East Lyme held Waterford to two points in the second quarter on Tuesday night to take a 19-14 halftime lead.

“They never stop,” Lancers head coach Bill Bassett said. “They just play hard all night. It’s a typical East Lyme team. (They’re) well-coached and they just go-and-go-and-go and do not stop, and they play with such a high energy. (It’s) what makes them such a good team.”

The Vikings led 21-18 with five minutes left in the third quarter when they began pulling away thanks to Anglin’s offense and turnovers.

Walsh made a three to start a 17-5 run in which he scored 10 straight.

A steal by Anglin led to a transition layup for Walsh to give East Lyme a 26-18 lead with 4:28 left in the third.

Another layup and another three pushed the Vikings' lead to 31-23 with 2:30 remaining in the quarter.

Anglin had a steal that he took the other way for a layup and junior John Bureau turned a layup into a three-point play to give East Lyme its largest lead to that point, 36-23, with 37.9 seconds left in the third.

Asked if he would’ve believed an ECC tournament title was possible when the team was 7-8, Walsh said, “We’re confident in ourselves no matter what. We held that expectation throughout the whole year. … When we’re down, we rely on our defense and we know that our defense will be there no matter what.”

n.griffen@theday.com