In May 1920, St. Thomas won the first Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference baseball title contested, two months after the conference was formed.

Sunday, 101 years later, the Tommies secured their 38th and final league regular-season championship, pulling away late to record a 7-1 victory over Concordia-Moorhead.

The unranked Tommies (23-5 overall, 17-2 MIAC) ran their win streak to nine and have captured 20 of their last 22 games. They edged Gustavus (18-3) for the MIAC crown on win percentage, as the Covid season left teams unable to play a typical 20-game schedue. Teams have played anywhere from 12 to 24 conference games.

It was the Purple's eighth MIAC solo or shared crown in 11 seasons under Coach Chris Olean, whose program is leaving the MIAC and Division III this summer and heading to Division I with all St. Thomas sports.

An added bonus in the 2021 season: a double bye for St. Thomas into the May 20-22 double-elimination playoff finals as the top seed. All 11 league teams qualified for the league playoffs, but only the overall champ is idle next weekend. The Nos. 2-3-4-5-6 teams will play a best-of-three set against Nos. 11-10-9-8-7, respectively, to cut the field to six. Two elimination games will set the No. 3-4 seeds.

Senior lefty Graham Laubscher scattered three hits over eight shutout innings, with 10 strikeouts and two walks, and is 5-0 in his last six starts. He surpassed 200 career Ks Sunday his 31st career appearance. He led just 1-0 into the seventh inning and 2-0 into the eighth before a five-run surge broke open the game. Laubscher stranded two runners in both the first and sixth inning and set down 15 in a row from the end ofmthe first into the sixth inning.

Redshirt freshman Jake Porter went 4-for-4, was hit by pitch and had two RBI hits to lead a 15-hit attack. Charlie Bartholomew's two-out single in the fourth inning made it 1-0, and Porter's two-out single in the seventh inning made it 2-0. In the five-run eighth inning, Kyle Halverson had an RBI hit, Porter drove in another run, and Sam Kulesa had a two-run double.

Max Moris had his second consecutive three-hit game, and Avery Lehman ran his hitting streak to eight games.

St. Thomas has allowed just 26 runs in its 23 wins, and has a Division III-best 1.43 staff ERA. The held MIAC opponents to one or no runs in 12 of the 19 league games.