The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team saw its five-game win streak snapped by virtue of a 12-2 East Coast Conference loss in a road tilt with the University of Bridgeport. The Spartans are now 14-7 overall and 5-2 in the ECC, while Bridgeport improved to 6-10, 1-2.

St. Thomas Aquinas came into the day off a big twin-bill sweep of the Purple Knights on Thursday, winning the opener in walk-off fashion with three runs in their final at-bat, and closing out the nitecap with Rob Frank's no-hitter. Saturday afternoon appeared to be going in the same direction, with the Spartans hitting the board first.

Derek Hirsch got STAC on the board with an RBI triple and came in when Nick Barbalato singled, staking the Spartans to a 2-0 lead in the top of the second. Bridgeport cut the deficit in half with an unearned run in the bottom half, but it was the wildness of starter Eric Cooper that would put the Spartans in the hole.

Starting the bottom of the fourth, Cooper walked the first two Purple Knights and followed with a wild pitch and a two-RBI single, giving the hosts a lead they would not relinquish. When all was said and done, Bridgeport would push across six runs in the inning on just three hits, opening a 7-2 advantage.

With the run support he needed, UB starter Shaun Hancock settled in, holding the Spartans scoreless the rest of the way while allowing just seven hits in tossing the nine-inning complete game. Bridgeport would tack on insurance in the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings, more than enough to offset Efrain Bautista's three-hit afternoon for the Spartans.

STAC has now taken two of the first three games in the series, with the finale scheduled for this Monday, April 1 at Provident Bank Park, with first pitch slated for 3:00 pm. That will be the first of three in a row at home for the Spartans, continuing Wednesday against Caldwell and in an ECC battle against Molloy on Friday.