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WESTERVILLE, Ohio – The Cardinal baseball team endured a disappointing finish to the Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) Tournament Saturday morning at Fishbaugh Field, falling behind early and ultimately dropping a 15-6 decision against red-hot Baldwin Wallace.

Otterbein, the OAC regular-season champion currently sitting at 30-14 overall, will now wait to see if it receives an at-large bid to the upcoming NCAA Division III Tournament. The Cards, having won 30 games for a third-straight year, hold a very high strength of schedule and will learn of their fate/destination late Sunday night or early Monday morning through a press release. There is no selection show.

Baldwin Wallace (31-12) entered as the No. 3 seed, but compiled a whopping 56 combined runs over the three days to claim the program's first OAC Tournament since 1985. They also receive an NCAA automatic bid.

Otterbein took the field behind senior standout Craig Prince, who had missed his last two starts attempting to overcome a tough injury but persevered to take the ball on championship Saturday. He nearly punctuated a 1-2-3 first inning on what could have been a swinging strikeout, but the first-base umpire ruled BW's Alex Marcum did not go around and the at-bat continued.

The Yellow Jackets followed with a two-out rally as Marcum walked on the next pitch, and the middle of the lineup delivering four-straight hits and eventually scoring four times to reverse early momentum. BW later held a 6-1 advantage before a scrappy Otterbein team tried to claw back, getting a two-run homer from senior Bryan Stopar in the third to make the deficit just 6-3 with a lot of baseball left.

BW took advantage of an Otterbein miscue in the fourth as the Cardinals committed an error on a potential double-play ground ball with one out in the frame. The visitors ultimately crossed five more runs, four of them being unearned, to grab an 11-3 lead.

The Cards never stopped grinding and kept things interesting with a three-run fifth inning, finding some rhythm behind consecutive doubles from Connor Brett and Justin Feltner and then a sac-fly from Ben Beachy later on. Otterbein left two runners on base as a caught stealing ending the sequence.

Baldwin Wallace capped the scoring with four runs in the seventh on a grand slam, and Otterbein couldn't catch up over its final few at-bats. The game featured 29 combined hits and intense moments throughout.

Five Cardinals had multi-hit games as Feltner, Brett, Stopar and relief pitcher Collin Hoffmann were each selected to the All-Tournament Team. In addition, Feltner and left fielder Tyler Thompson earned spots this weekend on the CoSIDA Academic All-District team, and will advance to the upcoming Academic All-America ballot. Those national selections will be announced June 5.

The Baldwin Wallace victory marks a second-straight year that the No. 3 seed has won the tournament after Otterbein swept through the bracket from the same spot last spring. BW seniors Spencer Badia and Alex Marcum were co-MVP's this time around.

The Cardinals are hoping to return to the NCAA's after competing in the South Regional last year in Danville, Va. Stayed tuned to otterbeincardinals.com and D3baseball.com for updates over the next 48 hours.