The Dominican University baseball team suffered their first setback of the 2019 Northern Athletics Collegiate Conference (NACC) baseball double-elimination tournament on Thursday evening at Kapco Park in Mequon, Wisconsin, falling 8-2 to the second-seeded Aurora University Spartans.  The Stars, managing just three hits in the loss, fall to 20-19 overall and will play against the Concordia University Wisconsin Falcons in an elimination game on Friday afternoon. First pitch is scheduled for 1:00 p.m.
 
"We went up against a bit of a buzz saw with Aurora's pitcher, Chris Roycroft, tonight," said Steve Hardman, the Stars' head coach. "He commanded the strike zone and we didn't have an answer. We need to have a short memory and come out tomorrow and find a way to win one game at a time."
 
Leading 3-0 after five, the Spartans broke the game open in the bottom of the sixth, chasing Dominican's Hayden Young from the game with a four-run inning.  Suffering the loss, Young falls to 3-5 on the season.
 
With just one hit through the first eight innings, the Stars scratched across a pair of runs when Roycroft was lifted for the ninth.  Ryan Simak worked a leadoff work and Johnny Condron followed with a single before Frankie Sessa pushed across both with a two-run double to left-center.  For Sessa, the hit was the second of the ballgame.
 
After winning their tournament opener earlier in the day, the Stars will now have to stave off elimination in the 1:00 p.m. game on Friday to get to another elimination game at 4:00 p.m.  If Dominican can get through both, the Stars would then return to Kapco on Saturday for a 10:00 a.m. elimination game.