For a third straight day the Stetson bats were held in check by Lipscomb pitching as the Bisons completed a three-game weekend sweep at Melching Field with a 6-1 decision on Saturday.

The loss for the Hatters (25-29, 9-12) was their fifth straight to end the year and puts Stetson in the opening game of next weeks' Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament in Nashville against regular season league champion Kennesaw State.

The Hatters will take on the Owls on Wednesday at 11 a.m. (CT) at Ken Dugan Field on the Lipscomb campus. All of the games in the A-Sun Championship will be broadcast on ESPN3.

Lipscomb (30-25, 12-9) finishes the season as the No. 4 seed and will take on third seeded Jacksonville in the late game on Wednesday. Second-seeded North Florida will face Florida Gulf Coast in the middle game on the opening day of the tournament.

The Hatters had no answer for the Lipscomb pitching duo of Kyle Kemp (3-2) and Alex Dorso. Only a pinch hit home run by freshman Benito Varela leading off the ninth inning kept the Hatters from being shutout for just the second time all year. Stetson finished with four hits in the game and only threatened to score one other time.

“That was the story of the season,” Hatters head coach Pete Dunn said. “We talked all year about trying to build momentum so that we would be playing our best baseball going into the post-season, but we are playing our worst baseball right now.

“Offensively, we had four hits all day and one of those was from a guy who hadn't played all year. He goes in there and hits a home run. It is just so defeating. When you have confidence that you can score runs, if you get down it doesn't matter. We just can't do that.”

All of the Bisons offense came from the top of the order. Michael Gigliotti had three hits, including a triple, and scored four runs; Lee Solomon fell just a single short of hitting for the cycle, scoring twice and driving in three, and Adam Lee drove in a pair of runs to set a Lipscomb single-season RBI record.

“They have good players, it is that simple,” Dunn said. “They have really good players.”

Beyond the top of the Lipscomb order, Stetson's pitching kept the Bisons in check. Five Stetson pitchers combined to strike out 10 and the only inning in which Lipscomb scored more than one run was the seventh when Solomon hit a two-run homer off Joey Gonzalez.

Stetson starter Ben Onyshko (2-1) took the loss despite allowing just one earned run over two-plus innings. He was followed on the mound by Erik Wiebke, Gonzalez, Jack Perkins and Walker Sheller. Only Perkins escaped his outing without allowing a run.

Offensively, the Hatters put the ball in play, but had 13 fly ball outs.

“At the end of the seventh inning we had twice as many fly balls as we had ground balls,” Dunn said. “That is the problem. We talk about hitting ground balls and line drives and spraying the ball all over the field, but all we do it pull and hit lazy fly balls.

“No one wants to go the other way, no one makes adjustments to go up the middle, it is just pull, pull, pull. We do it in practice and we do it in games. We just don't make adjustments. You play like you practice and we don't make adjustments.”

The Hatters now turn their focus toward the conference tournament, knowing that their only hope of extending the season is getting on a hot streak in Nashville.

“You have to get them to buy into it being a new season,” Dunn said. “I've said throughout my coaching career that there is no mythical switch you can reach over and flip once you get into post season. You'd like to think it is that easy.

“They are as frustrated as we are, but they have to make the adjustments because they are the ones at the plate. We can talk about it, but they are the ones who have to make the adjustments at the plate in the games. They just aren't doing it. I wish I could tell you that I am smart enough to give them the right words of wisdom that would make them a different team come next Wednesday, but I am not.”

The Hatters are expected to send junior Mitchell Jordan to the mound to face Kennesaw State in the opening game. He most likely will square off against the Owls' Chris Erwin in a rematch from last weekend. The Hatters won that game 6-2.

“Kennesaw is a very confident team,” Dunn said. “They believe in themselves even though they didn't have a great overall record. They really played well and had confidence on conference weekends, so you would expect them to have the same approach in the tournament. We will probably see Chris Erwin, and we beat him. I hope, if that happens, we will have some confidence in the fact that we have already beaten him.”