The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team won its second straight game, edging American International College, 5-4 in Lake Worth, Florida. The Spartans have won five of their last seven and are now 2-1 halfway through their southern trip to improve to 6-3 overall, while AIC drops to 3-2.

It took only until the bottom of the first for the Spartans to jump on top, as Efrain Bautista drove in Mike Russo with an RBI single. One inning later, Nick Gargan tripled and came home when Derek Hirsch reached on an error, putting STAC up by a pair.

AIC knotted the score with a pair in the top of the third, and the game remained tied through six innings. STAC broke the tie with a decisive rally in the last of the seventh. Frank Salerno led off with a single and moved up on a sacrifice. Russo would break the tie with an RBI double, and came around on a Stanley Susana single. Gargan would follow with another run-scoring single to give the Spartans a 5-2 edge.

After STAC's bullpen tossed 4.1 innings of scoreless relief, the Yellow Jackets made a late bid with a pair of runs in the ninth, putting the tying run in scoring position with nobody out, but Dan Diaz would come on in relief of Jon Scott to record the final three outs and fan the last batter with two men on to preserve the victory.

Brian Tompkins pitched 2.1 scoreless innings and Rob Naughton ran his scoreless streak to 10 innings overall by hurling two blank frames to earn his first collegiate win in relief. Gargan led the balanced offensive attack with three hits, while Salerno, Russo, Bautista, and Susana added two each.

St. Thomas Aquinas, ranked #6 in the East Region in today's d2Baseballnews.com  poll, return to action tomorrow evening, traveling to face Nova Southeastern in a 6:00 pm start. The Spartans will take on St. Michael's College on Tuesday, March 12 before wrapping up their trip against Caldwell College on Wednesday, March 13.