Carthage (31-4) lost the battle for the CCIW baseball championship on Friday with a 7-5 loss in 10 innings to No. 12 Illinois Wesleyan (29-8) at the Carthage Baseball Field in Kenosha, Wis. The game was a completion of a contest suspended on Thursday, May 1 on account of darkness with the two teams tied, 5-5, after nine innings. The Titans won the first game of the series on Thursday, 2-1. Carthage came back to win the Illinois Wesleyan finale, 18-8.

The picture for the 2008 Midwest Conference Baseball Championship Tournament could become clearer on Saturday and then again, things may just stay the same. All four South teams: Grinnell, Illinois College, Knox and Monmouth enter the weekend with identical 5-5 conference records. The South regular-season conference finales are set for Saturday, when Knox hosts Illinois College and Monmouth travels to Grinnell, but the odds are against a champion being crowned. Four of the seven possible scenarios based on Saturday's outcomes will require at least one playoff game to decide the South champ, while a pair of splits would leave all four teams at 6-6 and a four-team, three-game, single-elimination qualifying tourney would unfold on Sunday. If the mini-tourney is called upon to crown the South's top team, it would mark the first time in league history that this scenario has ever played out.

La Verne continued its quest for a conference title with an 8-7 triumph over visiting Pomona-Pitzer Friday at Ben Hines Field. Trevor Boucher led off the bottom of the ninth with a triple and eventually scored the game-winning run as the Leopards took the series opener in their final home game of the regular season. The Leopards (23-14-1) led 7-3 before the Sagehens (27-11) scored a run in the seventh and three more in the ninth to knot the contest at 7-7. La Verne collected 10 hits on the afternoon including four doubles. Scott Marcus and Jon-Michael Hattabaugh went 2-4 with a double. Marcus and Jason Munoz each drove in two runs. La Verne remained 1/2 game behind Redlands in the league standings as the Bulldogs topped CMS 8-5. A tie atop the standings between Redlands and La Verne would give the Bulldogs the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament by virtue of a better head-to-head record.

Andrew Decibus was a combined 5-for-8 with eight RBIs, and scored the go-ahead run in game two all the way from second base on a suicide squeeze, and Rob Sumner had five runs and five stolen bases, to break the century mark in swipes, as a senior-laden New Jersey City lineup made the Gothic Knights winners on the final day of the 2008 season, sweeping a non-conference doubleheader from Staten Island, 7-4 and 5-4, Friday night at the Staten IslandBaseball Complex. New Jersey City finished the 2008 season on a four-game winning streak, to conclude the year 14-26 overall while playing a full 40-game schedule for only the second time in school history. Staten Island, which will be the #1 seed in the CUNYAC conference tournament next week, finished the regular season 18-18 overall. New Jersey City won three of four meetings between the schools this season, including the final three games.