The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team, forced to play their entire weekend set on the road due to unplayable field conditions, bounced back from a 5-1 loss to defeat Dowling College 6-3, earning a split. STAC has taken two of three thus far this weekend, improving to 10-6, 2-1 while Dowling fell to 5-10, 1-2.

Game one shaped up as a pitchers' duel, with STAC's Robert Frank matching zeroes with Dowling's Adam Brown through three innings. The Golden Lions broke the deadlock with a run in the fourth, but the Spartans answered in the bottom half on an Efrain Bautista RBI double.

Both pitchers remained strong until the sixth, when Dowling broke through with a pair of RBI doubles to grab a two-run lead and end Frank's day. The Golden Lions added a pair of insurance runs in the seventh off reliever Jon Scott and Brown settled in to finish the seven-inning complete-game. Mike Russo went 3-for-3 to lead the Spartans, but it was not enough to keep Frank from falling to 1-3 on the season.

Dowling jumped in front early in game two, pushing a pair of runs across in the first inning against STAC's Eric Cooper. That lead would hold up until the third when the Spartans would battle back to tie the score. Stanley Susana's clutch two-out double brought in Andrew Romanella and Derek Hirsch to create a 2-2 tie.

While Cooper kept Dowling off the board, STAC finally took its first lead of the day with a run in the fifth on a Romanella bunt single but the Golden Lions would tie it in the sixth with a pair of extra-base hits. St. Thomas Aquinas would post the decisive rally in the last of the sixth with Nick Gargano's RBI double putting the Spartans in front. Derek Hirsch followed with a two-run homer to provide insurance, and Dan Diaz would come on for Cooper in the seventh to close out the split.

Cooper improved to 1-2 with the win, while Hirsch led the charge with a 3-for-3 game, while Susana added two hits for STAC.

St. Thomas Aquinas will conclude the weekend set tomorrow, Sunday, March 24 at Golden Lions Field in Brookhaven. They are scheduled to return home to play Bloomfield College at Provident Bank Park on Tuesday, March 26, in a 3:00 pm start.