Senior lefty Graham Laubscher continued his shutdown ways and redshirt freshman Jake Porter drove in three runs with a pair of RBI hits to lead top-seed St. Thomas to a 7-2 win over fifth-seed Bethel in Thursday's first game of the four-team double-elimination semifinals of the MIAC Baseball Playoffs in Collegeville.

Redshirt freshman Sam Kulesa went 3-for-4 and scored two runs to help St. Thomas (27-5) run its win streak to 13 games. Senior Josh Thorp's two-out triple in the eighth plated two insurance runs. Newcomer Mike Wallace, playing his first varsity game with the Tommies, went 3-for-3 and scored one run.

Coach Chris Olean's Toms moved into Friday's winners' bracket game against tonight's Gustavus-St. Mary's victor.

Bethel (24-16), which had a five-game win streak halted, plays an elimination game at 3 p.m. Friday. The Royals had scored 28 runs in their 3-0 start to the conference playoffs with a sweep of Macalester and Wednesday's 16-8 defeat of St. John's.

Laubscher worked 8 1-3 innings and improved to 6-0 in his seven starts since April 1, recorded against six different league teams. In that stretch the Stillwater, Minn., native has a 1.61 ERA with 71 strikeouts and 14 walks in 50.1 innings.

Bethel took a 1-0 lead with Keenan Hodgkin's solo home run in the second inning. The Toms tied it on Porter's RBI single in the fourth.

St. Thomas went ahead 3-1 in the fifth inning on Kulesa's RBI single that followed hits by Wallace and Matthew Enck. In the Toms' current 13-game win streak, Kulesa is batting .479 (23-of-48) with 15 runs and eight RBI.

The Toms still led just 3-1 when Laubscher's wild pitch with one out in the seventh inning made it 3-2. But the Tommie starter got two strikeouts to strand the tying and go-ahead runners.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Wallace singled and one later Kulesa singled. Wallace was then tagged out at home plate on a close play on a squeeze attempt. But Porter's two-out double pushed the lead to 5-2, and after an intentional walk, Thorp's triple gave the Purple a five-run lead.

Laubscher got a strikeout to start the ninth but was replaced after he issued a walk. T.J. Constertina allowed a walk and a single to load the bases but got two strikeouts to end the game.

St. Thomas is now 15-2 in games this season when it does not commit a fielding error. The Purple lead Division III teams in fielding percentage at .980.