GATES MILLS, Ohio -- Notre Dame needed to turn two on Sunday against the Bears of Shawnee State University: win twice and they'd live to play another day, earning a spot in postseason play. But after winning, 7-4, in the opener, the Falcons' hopes were dashed with a 9-4 loss in the nightcap. (Gm-1 | Gm-2)

The games -- home tilts for SSU as a make-up date for last Sunday's rainouts in Portsmouth, Ohio -- were played on the all-turf surface at Hawken Upper School in Gates Mills, Ohio. While the grass was artificial, the air was real enough -- a brisk wind gusting upwards of 20 miles per hour and a wind chill in the 30s. Also real enough was the tension of a de facto play-in series -- should NDC sweep the first-place Bears, they would earn a berth in the American Mideast Conference Tournament, a first for the six-year-old program.

With the split, the Falcons (28-20, 13-11 AMC) finished in fourth place in the final AMC standings, one game out of third (the top three teams in the seven-team circuit advance to postseason play).

Shawnee State (28-27, 17-7) clinched the conference's regular-season crown with the win in game two.

In the opener, Notre Dame battled back from deficits of 2-0 and 3-1 in turning back the Bears in an eventual 7-4 win. The Falcons got key performances from starter #Travis Bondy# and then reliever #Sean Harnish# after ceding the early lead to Shawnee State.

SSU plated a pair in the bottom of the first after Bondy walked two and gave up a double. A double by #Travis Brown# and an RBI single by #Tony Younis# got the Falcons back to within one, at 2-1, in the third. After SSU scored a lone run in the third, NDC found themselves down, 3-1.

The Falcons again countered, this time with a three-run outburst against Shawnee starter Austin Dunfee in the road half of the fourth. SSU committed an error in the inning, and the Falcons capitalized with RBI hits from #Jesse Carriere# (two-run single) and #Pat Ross# (triple) to pull ahead, 4-3.

Bondy wriggled out of jams in the fourth and fifth innings, allowing just an unearned run in the fifth despite the Bears putting multiple runners in scoring position. Bondy's escape artistry included a bases-loaded strikeout in the fifth. Both teams scored solo runs in the fifth, and NDC held a 5-4 lead heading into the sixth.

In the sixth, Bondy set down the Bears, one-two-three, and the Falcons picked up two key two-out runs in the top of the seventh to go up, 7-4. In the bottom of the seventh, Bondy was lifted after allowing a leadoff single. Sophomore right-hander Sean Harnish came on to garner his second save of the season by going through the heart of the SSU order like a buzz saw -- Harnish got a strikeout and two ground balls out of the Bears' two-three- and four hitters to close out the game.

Bondy went six innings in running his season record to 5-1. He walked two and struck out four.

In game two, NDC scored a pair of first-inning runs on a #Jesse Bartle# single, and starter #Matthew Kastelic# took that two-run cushion into the third before he was chased by allowing six straight Bears to reach base (three singles, home run, two walks). Shawnee State parlayed those base runners into three runs to take a 3-2 lead.

The Bears tacked on two more runs in the fourth. Notre Dame made it a game in the top of the fifth when the top of the order produced a pair of runs off reliever Adam Wamsley, who spelled Adam Hatton. That brought the Falcons to within one (5-4), but that's as close as Notre Dame would get. NDC committed three costly errors in coughing up four runs (three unearned) over the final two frames.

Offensively, after two-and-a-half months of unprecedented production from Falcon bats, Notre Dame went quietly over the final two stanzas. Wamsley set the Falcons down in order in both the sixth and seventh to secure the win and, for the Bears, a regular-season AMC championship and the right to host the No. 2 (Malone) and No. 3 (Mount Vernon) seeds in the AMC Championship Tournament.

Pat Ross went 3-for-4 in the second game and for the day, went 5-for-8, with two doubles and a triple. The freshman right fielder from Gahanna, Ohio, set a new program mark for most hits in a single season (62) with his first hit of the day, and he finished the season with the highest single-season batting average (.410, 66-for-161) in NDC history.

Jesse Bartle had four hits on the afternoon. For the season, Notre Dame batted .334 (485-for-1,453) and scored a program-record 318 runs. But on Sunday night, when the winds died down and the dust settled, the Men in Blue & White were contemplating where they could've gotten just six more runs.