CROWN POINT, Ind. – The Olivet Nazarene University baseball team survived a pair of elimination games but could not get a third, bowing out of the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference Tournament Friday night at Slammers Stadium.

After routing St. Ambrose 11-4 in their first game, the Tigers saw their season come to an end with an 8-4 loss to Judson.

The Tigers passed their first test with ease, routing the Fighting Bees with some early firepower. Behind a five-run first, ONU built an 8-0 lead after three innings to coast to the big victory.

Three different Tigers notched RBIs in the five-spot first inning, highlighted by multi-RBI hits from Aden Aukland and Taylor Bledsoe. The former roped a two-run single to open the scoring while the latter capped the big inning with a two-RBI single to put ONU up big.

Evan Pogioli followed up with an RBI single up the middle in the second, and Vince Martinez and Takumi Martinez plated runs in the third to build an 8-0 lead.

St. Ambrose, who entered the tournament as the No. 2 seed, sliced the lead in half with a four-spot in the fourth. But the Pogioli and Martinez would provide insurance runs in the eighth to put the game away and advance to the semifinal round.

 With a trip to the CCAC championship game on the line, the Tigers ultimately came up short in their rematch with Judson. The game followed a similar script to their matchup Thursday, with the Eagles taking the lead and ONU fighting back to tie it on two separate occasions. But again, the Tigers could not muster the firepower to get over the hump to get eliminated from the postseason.

Aukland and Alex Seaton accounted for all four of Olivet's runs, with each player plating two RBIs with two hits each. Martinez joined the pair with a multi-hit game of his own.

The Tigers end the year with a .500 record at 26-26.

--ONU—

*Contact: Evan Wild, Sports Information Director, ewwild@olivet.edu