The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team rallied to take a late lead before falling, 10-8, in an East Coast Conference battle at Provident Bank Park in the final game of the regular season. The Spartans fell to 24-17-1 overall and 14-10 in the ECC, with Bridgeport improving to 24-22, 15-9.

STAC will take the #3 seed and face #2 Bridgeport in Thursday's ECC Tournament opener at 12:00 noon at Mitchel Park in Uniondale, NY. The other opening round game in the double-elimination tournament will feature #1 Dowling against #4 LIU Post. The Spartans are looking to defend their back-to-back conference tournament titles, with the winning squad earning an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Struggling for runs of late, the Spartans wasted little time getting on the board with Joseph Pena leading off with a double and scoring on a first-inning Stanley Susana RBI grounder. Bridgeport went to the long ball, crashing a pair of homers en route to posting a pair of runs each in the second, fourth, and sixth innings in opening a 6-1 lead.

STAC rallied for three in the home sixth, keyed by a Brandon Fischer RBI triple and run scoring hits from Chrsitian Santo and Rich Baerga to trim the margin to 6-4. The teams traded runs in the seventh, giving the Purple Knights a 7-5 advantage heading into the bottom of the eighth and setting the stage for a wild finish.

With first and second and one down, Deven Del Priore's RBI double cut the gap to one, and Pena followed with a two-run single to left, giving STAC an 8-7 lead. That was not to last, however, as a leadoff error opened the door for the visitors to rally with three of their own and capture the win.

Christian Santo and Nick Gargan had three hits each for STAC, which skids into the post-season having dropped seven of its last nine contests overall. Christian Santo was tagged with the relief loss, his first decision of the season.