The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team fell into an early hole and could not recover in a 7-4 loss at Pace University. Chris Goetz had three hits to lead the Spartan offense as his team fell to 13-9 overall while Pace improved to 5-10. STAC has now dropped four of its last six games after reeling off an eight-game winning streak.

STAC's defense has struggled of late and it proved costly in the bottom of the 1st inning as Pace pushed across three runs, two of which were unearned via a pair of Spartan errors. St. Thomas Aquinas chipped away with a run in the 2nd on a Goetz single, driving home Derek Hirsch, who had led off with a double.

Pace answered quickly with another run on three hits in their half of the frame to take a 4-1 lead, but STAC got that run back in the 3rd. Kenny Kirshner walked, stole second, advanced on a grounder and scored on a Joe Boland sac fly to cut the margin to 4-2.

The last big chance for St. Thomas Aquinas came in the sixth, when they loaded the bases with two out, and the score was trimmed to 4-3 on a passed ball, bringing in Boland and leaving a pair in scoring position. The Setters would tack on single runs in the 6th and 7th innings - the latter of the unearned variety - and the hosts had reestablished their early margin at 6-3.

Mike Apreda's two-out RBI double in the eighth would give the Spartans life, cutting the margin to 6-4 with the tying runs in scoring position, but again the Pace mound crew would escape further damage, with the offense tacking on another marker in the bottom half to close out the scoring.

Matthew Petro was tagged with the loss to fall to 1-1 on the season, and Nick D'Angelo added a pair of hits in the 10-hit effort that saw STAC strand 10 runners.

The Spartans - who have played 22 games in 26 days - will enjoy a day off Thursday before returning to East Coast Conference play in a four-game series against Mercy College this weekend. The set starts with a single game at Mercy on Friday, April 4 at 3:00 pm; proceeds to Provident Bank Park for a home twin-bill on Saturday starting at noon; and wraps up back in Dobbs Ferry on Sunday in an early 10:00 am start.