The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team got another strong start, with Rob Naughton going eight innings in a 2-1 East Coast Conference win at LIU-Post. The Spartans have won 8-of-9 games overall and retained first place in the ECC, improving to 24-11 overal and 13-5 in conference. Post fell to 13-19, 5-9 on the season.

Game one of the series on Friday was a 2-0 pitchers' duel through seven innings before STAC broke the game open late. Sunday's contest followed much the same pattern, with Post's Joey Arena and STAC's Naughton keeping things scoreless through four frames. The Pioneers had the game's best scoring chance to that point, but Rich Baerga's throw nailed Kevin Chenicek at home to preserve the tie.

Once again, it was the Spartans breaking through with a pair of solo runs. Baerga was the catalyst in the fifth inning, leading off with a double and coming home when the Pioneers failed to pull a twin-killing on an Efrain Bautista grounder. The extended it to 2-0 an inning later when Frank Salerno went all the way to third on an infield error and scored on a big two-out hit by Stanley Susana.

After 14 scoreless innings at home, the Pioneers finally broke through in the sixth, as Casey McKay led off with a double and came in to score two ground-outs later to make it 2-1. Naughton would not be threatened thereafter, however, retiring the next nine batters he would face.

There was some drama in the ninth as the freshman was given the chance to go the distance, but walked the leadoff batter before yielding to the top save man in the East Coast Conference. CJ. Ferriggi emerged from the bullpen to retire all three batters he would face and take his league-leading sixth save of the season.

Naughton allowed just one run on five hits over eight innings, walking three and fanning four to improve to 4-0 and lower his season ERA to 1.93, among the ECC's best. Baerga had two hits to lead the Spartans.

STAC has now taken both road games in the four-game series, which concludes at Provident Bank Park with a double-header tomorrow, April 22, starting at 4:00 pm. They will return to PBP for a non-conference "road" game against Dominican College on Wednesday, April 24.

ECC Standings (thru games of April 21)

                                       W     L       Pct        GB   Gms Rem

St. Thomas Aquinas    13     5     .722     -----     6

Molloy College               10     6      .625      2.0       8

Univ of Bridgeport          9      7      .562      3.0       8

Dowling College             9      7      .562      3.0       8

Queens College             8      8      .500      4.0       8

LIU-Post                        5       9     .357       6.0     10

Mercy College                4     16     .200     10.0      4