The Dominican University baseball team fell 5-4 to the Aurora University Spartans in 13 innings in the Stars' opening round game of the Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) Tournament on Thursday morning at Kapco Park in Mequon, Wisconsin.  The Stars will now face the Concordia University Wisconsin Falcons on Friday morning at 10:00 a.m. in an elimination game.
 
In the loss Thursday, Dominican left 20 runners on base, including leaving the bases loaded in the third, fourth, sixth and eighth innings.
 
Trailing 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth, Dominican cut the lead in half in the top of the fourth when Brian Costello worked a walk with the bases loaded to score JT Hicks (Albion, Mich.) who had reached on an Aurora error to start the frame.
 
In the top of the sixth, Dominican evened the score when Joe Kukla (Chicago, Ill.) lined a one-out triple down the left field line and then cross when Quinlan Milne Rojek (Minneapolis, Minn.) pulled a single through the right side of the infield.
 
Aurora answered in the bottom of the sixth with a single run off Dominican's Colin Janison (Las Vegas, Nev.) to pull back in front 3-2 before the Stars took their first lead of the game in the top of the eighth when the Spartans' Jeff Woods surrendered a leadoff single to Kukla before uncorking a throwing error when Milne Rojek laid down a sac bunt to put runners at second and third with nobody out.  Woods then hit Janison and Brian Costello (Norridge, Ill.) to even the score at 3-3.  Dominican's next hitter, Cody Schuster (Las Vegas, Nev.) bounced into a 6-4-3 double play allowing Milne Rojek to score an unearned run and give the Stars their first lead of the game 4-3.
 
Aurora opened the bottom of the eighth with three straight singles to even the score before Dominican cut down the Spartans' Nick Turner at the plate for the first out when Aurora tried a squeeze bunt before Ryan Rybakowski bounced into an inning-ending double play.
 
After Dominican stranded a pair of runners in the top of the ninth, Janison pitched around a one-out single in the bottom of the ninth to send the game to extras and ending Janison's outing on the mound.  The 6'2 sophomore right-hander surrendered four runs on 14 hits and two walks while striking out six and picking up no decision in his 12^th start of the season.
 
With Tyler Brown (Bartlett, Ill.) taking over on the mound for the tenth, both teams hung zeros on the board in the tenth, 11^th and 12^th innings despite Dominican loading the bases in the 12^th.
 
After the Stars went down in order in the top of the 13^th, Aurora's Turner doubled to the gap in right-center to lead off the bottom of the 13^th.  Jeff LaPage the hit a chopper up the middle that was gloved by Nate Natividad but his throw pulled Lukas McKinney off the bag at first to put runners at the corners with nobody out.  After an intentional walk, Brown got Mike Cherven to flyout to shallow right before Jeffrey Mayes plated the winning run with a sac fly.
 
Brown was tagged with the loss despite giving up just the one unearned run on two hits over 3.2 innings of work out of the bullpen.
 
Offensively, Dominican managed eight hits including two apiece for Kukla and Milne Rojek who had the Stars' only extra-base hits with a triple and a double respectively.