Rutland, VT - The Castleton State College men's ice hockey team dropped a 7-2 ECAC East contest to visiting Babson College Friday night at the Rutland Regional Fieldhouse.

With the win Babson improves to 7-9-1 overall and 6-6-0 in conference play, while Castleton drops to 8-8-2 and 4-6-2 in conference.

Castleton opened the scoring 3:04 into the contest as Omar Pacha netted his eighth goal of the season off a Brandon Heck assist. Babson answered with a pair of unanswered goals in the period as Brad Baldelli and Jason Schneider each tallied within two minutes of each other to give the Beavers the lead heading into the first intermission.

Heck evened the score at 2-2 just 1:45 into the second period, but it was all Babson from that point on as the Beavers netted four unanswered scores to end the period. JT Balben scored the game winner just 31 seconds after the Heck score and was followed in succession by scores from Casey Fazekas, Schneider and Mike Hoban.

Shane Farrell tacked on an insurance goal with 9:15 remaining in the game to round out the scoring.

Andrew Peabody stopped 22 shots to pick up the win in net for Babson, while Seth McNary was tagged with the loss, stopping 15 shots in two periods of play. Jay Seal relieved McNary and made 11 saves.

Both teams return to the ice tomorrow afternoon with Castleton playing host to UMass-Boston and Babson traveling to Skidmore. Both games are slated for a 4:00 pm face-off.