The St. Thomas Aquinas College baseball team took an East Coast Conference twin-bill, 13-4 and 10-3, over Queens College at Provident Bank Park. Stanley Susana had five hits and five RBI on the day for the Spartans who have won 11 of their last 13 games to improve to 16-8-1 overall, and 11-3 in ECC play. Queens fell to 5-14, 2-8 after the pair of setbacks.
Elsewhere in ECC action on Saturday, LIU Post topped Dowling and Molloy split a double-header with Bridgeport. The Spartans now have a 2.5 game lead in the standings over Dowling, Post, and Molloy, who are in a virtual tie for second place in the conference. For the latest ECC Standings, Click Here.
STAC jumped to an early 3-0 lead in the first, with Susana, Giovanni Dingcong, and Rich Cesca each providing RBI singles. After Queens went scoreless in the visiting second, the Spartans pushed across one in the bottom half, touching off an unlikely string of eight straight half-innings in which the batting team scored one run.
Susana got the ball rolling with an RBI single in the second, Joseph Pena walked with the bags jammed to bring one home in the third, and Susana homered in the fourth, with Pena singling home another marker in the fifth.
With the game still in the balance at 7-4, the Spartans pulled away with a quartet of runs in the sixth. Pena again came through with the key hit of the frame, a two-run single that make the score 11-4. That was more than enough for Matt Kostolos, who allowed just one earned run over seven solid innings to improve to 4-2. Susana went 3-for-6 in the win, and Pena, Dingcong, and Nick Gargan added two each in the 14-hit attack. Brandon Burrell fell to 0-4 with the loss for the Knights, with Thomas Parish providing a pair of hits.
Game two started as the expected pitchers' duel, with Nick May facing Queens' top pitcher Cameron Burt. That would last only until the home second, when STAC strung four hits together with some wildness from Burt to open a 4-0 lead. Jonathan McGugan started the frame with a ground rule double, and Dingcong brought him in with one of his own.
Dingcong would score on a fielders' choice, narrowly beating a throw to the plate, and Gargan's walk and Susana's hit by pitch with the bases loaded drove in the following markers.
Queens answered quickly in the top of the third, however, with a Spartan error opening the door for a trio of unearned runs, cutting the gap to 4-3. The Knighs would hand back a pair of unearned runs of their own in the very next inning, with Rich Baerga's two-run single opening the gap to 6-3.
May settled in nicely from that point and his teammates did the rest, blowing the game open in a four-run sixth inning outburst. Susana had yet another run scoring hit, and Christian Santo drove in a pair with a single, as the four hits in the session included one from starting pitcher Michael Gonzalez in his first collegiate at bat.
With the victory, May improved to an impressive 4-1 on the season, allowing just those two third inning hits while striking out four and walking three, dropping Burt to 3-2 with the loss. Baerga drove in three runs in the nightcap and added two hits, along with Susana.
The four games series concludes in Flushing tomorrow with a 10:00 am twin bill at Queens. The Spartans return to Provident Bank Park for a trio of non-conference home games this week, hosting Nyack on Tuesday, Bloomfield on Wednesday, and Pace on Thursday - all three games are set for 3:30 pm starts.