The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team rallied to tie from a 5-2 deficit before falling to Felician College, 6-5, at Provident Bank Park. Stanley Susana had three hits to lead the Spartans, who fell to 23-14-1 while Felician improved to 20-26.

STAC's offense struggled early and Felician scored a pair of second inning runs against Spartan starter Eric Cooper, who worked 4.2 solid innings. The Golden Falcons extended that edge to 3-0 in the visiting sixth, only to be answered by Deven Del Priore's RBI single in the bottom half, trimming the gap back to two runs.

Felician yielded an unearned run in the bottom of the seventh, but added two more of their own in the top of the eighth, building a 5-2 advantage. Brandon Fischer stroked a run-scoring single in the bottom half, and Rich Cesca Jr's double deep to left brought in two more, tying the score at 5-5.

That was as close as it would get, however, as a big two-out hit in the top of the ninth off STAC's Maurizio Devita scored what proved to be the winning run. Susana led off the final frame with a double and moved to third with one down, but that was as close as the Spartans would get in falling to their second straight defeat.

Devita was saddled with the loss to fall to 3-2 on the season, with Felician's John Holland - the sixth of seven pitchers the Golden Falcons would use - ran his season mark to 6-5 with the victory. Cesca and Giovanni Dingcong had a pair of hits each for the Spartans, who stranded 10 baserunners on the afternoon.

The Spartans close out the regular season with a four-game East Coast Conference set with Bridgeport starting on Friday. By virtue of Molloy's loss on Monday, both STAC and Bridgeport have assured slots in the upcoming ECC Tournament. The weekend series starts Friday at Provident Bank Park with first pitch at 3:30, shifts to Bridgeport for a noon Saturday double, and wraps up back in Pomona at 1:00 Sunday.

In addition to being the Spartans' home finale, Sunday will feature Senior Day as well as STAC's annual Wounded Warrior Project day.