The sports information department at Lindenwood University tried its best to sum up how the Lions' first season under former Culver-Stockton College baseball coach Doug Bletcher ended.

"The Lindenwood baseball season came to an unsatisfactory end as the weather kept the Lions from having a chance to win the regional baseball title," the release said.

"Unsatisfactory" doesn't begin to tell the story though.

The Lions were eliminated from the NAIA Region V Tournament on Saturday night without losing their last game. Tied at 5-5 with top-seeded Missouri Baptist in the tournament's championship game, the Lions were up in the bottom of the ninth when Mother Nature finally delivered her knockout punch. Officials declared the field at the Lou Brock Sports Complex was unplayable.

Usually, teams would wait until the next day and pick up from there. This wasn't your normal tournament. For the first time, the NAIA said all of its regional tournaments had to be done by midnight Saturday. As a result, Missouri Baptist was declared the Region V champion and advanced to this week's Super Regional because it was the higher seed.

Only "Error" Bud Selig could have thought up such a scenario.

There's no tying in baseball.

"It's just terrible," Bletcher said Tuesday morning. "I'm just sick about it."

After helping mold Culver-Stockton into a power over the last decade, Bletcher continued his success in his first season at the St. Charles, Mo., school. The Lions won 40 games, including the Heart of America Athletic Conference Championship Series over Avila.

The Lions were able to play host to the region tournament, but Missouri Baptist, which won the American Midwest Conference crown, was tabbed as the top seed and Lindenwood was second in the six-team field.

Rain hampered the tournament from the start. Culver-Stockton's opening game with Missouri Baptist started Wednesday and finally ended on Thursday. Five games were squeezed in on Friday before the rains came again on Saturday.

Word leaked out on Saturday about what would happen if the tournament couldn't get finished in time. Missouri Baptist knew it would be declared the champion if the event was stopped. As a result, the Spartans players and coaches began to take their sweet time on Saturday.

According to Bletcher, the team refused to help put the tarp on or take the tarp off the field.

"There was almost a brawl because of it," Bletcher said.

Missouri Baptist played nice for a while, Bletcher said, but when the weather turned bad in the title game the team once again refused to help with field maintenance.

"I never saw a team panic so much and not handle the pressure," Bletcher said of Missouri Baptist. "They were going to take (the title) any way they could get it."

As Bletcher spent his Tuesday morning crafting a letter to his athletic director about what happened, Missouri Baptist (40-14-1) was getting ready for its weekend date in the Super Regional at Oklahoma City.

The good news for Bletcher is that they won't have to worry about this next year. The NAIA is doing away with the super regional concept. Five teams will make nine different regional tournaments throughout the country and the winners of those regionals will advance directly to the NAIA World Series. It will take the number of teams that make the NAIA Tournament down from 64 to 45.

That's little consolation for Bletcher and his team, which will go into next season with a one-game tie streak.

"We didn't lose our last game and we didn't win the national championship either," he said. "It makes no sense."