AUBURN — It took all of 11 seconds for Brunswick to flex its muscle against Edward Little on Thursday, but it took another 60 minutes before the Dragons could really feel comfortable against a tenacious Eddies squad that, at least for a half, was thinking upset.

Alison Watson netted a goal just 11 seconds after the opening whistle sounded and Hilary Champagne capped a flurry of offense in the game’s final 20 minutes with three goals to lead the Dragons to a deceptively convincing 5-0 victory over Edward Little.

“We knew Edward Little would battle hard. They always battle hard,” Brunswick coach Martyn Davison said. “We told the girls they’d have to battle hard for all 80 minutes, because we knew Edward Little would do the same.”

Things started well for the top-ranked Dragons (13-0), as Watson gathered a misplayed ball some 40 yards out, dribbled to the top of the 18 and drilled it past a diving Kate Sawyer, and freshman making her first varsity start in the cage for EL (5-6-2), just 11 seconds into the contest.

“Considering the type of team she faced today, I thought she did very, very well,” EL coach Val Ackley said. “The defense did a great job keeping a lot of the pressure off of her. We faced a lot of corner kicks, and they didn’t score on any of them. That says something about our defense.”

The Eddies’ offense nearly gave the Dragons something to think about early on, too. Not five minutes after the first goal, Jaclyn Masters broke in on the Brunswick goal up the right side. Brunswick’s freshman keeper, Lydia Caputi, rushed out to meet Masters and just got enough of the ball to deflect it away from the cage.

“When it was one-nil, they had a great chance,” Davison said. “We were kind of all over the place at the back end to start with, and if that goes in, it could have been a different game.”

The teams stayed even in the first half, too, with Edward Little forcing Caputi to make three saves, while Sawyer also had to stop just three.

“I was happy with our effort in the first half. We played well for 40 or 45 minutes,” Ackley said. “Unfortunately, it’s that demon that gets you when you’re an eighth-seeded team playing a first-seeded team.

“Against good teams, you’re going to get run down and tired,” Ackley added. “Plug away and get after it in the second half if you’re going to stay with a good team like that, and unfortunately for us, the effort deflated a bit in the last 20, and it showed with the three they scored.”

The second half was all Brunswick. The Dragons attempted 10 corner kicks to just one for EL, outshot the Eddies 17-1 and most importantly, outscored them 4-0 in the second stanza.

Taylor Caron scored on a direct kick from the left sideline, just outside the 18, in the 21st minute to give Brunswick a comfortable 2-0 cushion, and Champagne took care of the rest, scoring twice from the right side of the box and once from the top of the 18, each time past a sprawling Sawyer.