The Dominican University baseball team won a 3-1 extra inning affair before falling in game two, 11-8, despite a five-run rally in the ninths, splitting a Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) series with the Rockford University Regents on Saturday at Rivets Stadium in Rockford, Illinois.
 
The Stars, now 11-15 on the season and 5-5 in NACC play, will enjoy an off-day on Sunday before returning to action on Tuesday at Schaumburg Boomers Stadium when Dominican hosts the Wheaton College Thunder in a non-conference tilt.
 
Game One: Dominican 3, Rockford 1 (12 Inn.)
 
Sophomore right-hander Colin Janison (Las Vegas, Nev.) tossed nine shutout innings but did not factor in the decision as Rockford's Adam O'Malley matched Janison with 8.1 innings of shutout baseball.
 
The zeros continued for both sides in the tenth and 11^th innings before Dominican broke through for three runs in the top of the 12^th.  JT Hicks (Albion, Mich.) led off the inning with a walk and was sacrificed over to second base.  After another walk, sophomore Joe Kukla (Chicago, Ill.) delivered a two-run double down the left field line.  Kukla would later score on a passed ball with the bases loaded.
 
In the bottom of the 12th, Rockford pushed across one run off the Stars' Tyler Brown (Bartlett, Ill.) but Dominican's Quinten Hayes (Indianapolis, Ind.) stranded the tying run at first when he got Brett Down to groundout to second with runners at the corners.
 
For Hayes it was the first save of the season while Brown moved to 2-0 on the season.  For Janison, the nine shutout innings helped lower his ERA to a team-best 3.48.
 
Offensively, Kukla picked up two hits while the rest of the Dominican lineup managed just four.
 
Game Two: Rockford 11, Dominican 8
 
After leading 8-0 after three innings and 11-3 after seven, the Regents hang on in the ninth as the Stars rallied for five runs off Rockford's Josh Cooper.  Royce Salay (Henderson, Nev.) delivered the big hit in the inning with a bases-clearing double to left.
 
Robert Bavone (Bellwood, Ill) took the loss on the mound, lasting just one inning while being roughed up for six runs, four earned, on eight hits.  Chance Emlund (Chicago, III.) worked five innings out of the bullpen, allowing just three runs on five hits and one walk before Ryan Brown (Las Vegas, Nev.) tossed the final two innings for the Stars.
 
Janison, Salay and Lucas McKinney (Arvada, Colo.) logged two hits apiece in the losing effort.