WAUKESHA, Wis. - The Carroll University baseball team lost to second-place North Central College 7-1 in a College Conference of Illinois-Wisconsin game at Frame Park on Monday afternoon.
It was the fourth game in the last three days for Carroll, which suffered its second straight conference loss to drop to 7-5 in the league standings and 15-15 overall.
The Pioneers' lone run of the contest came in the bottom of the fifth as Joey Appino scored as the result of a wild pitch.
Thomas Ward, a junior first baseman from Waukesha, Wis. who currently leads Carroll with a .380 batting average, delivered his team-best ninth double to pace a five-hit attack.
Appino, Casey Mir, Trevor Benz and Benton Holly each followed with one hit for the Pioneers, who stranded 10 baserunners.
North Central, which entered the battle hovering just outside of the d3baseball.com top 25, improved to 8-5 in conference and 20-9 overall.
The high-powered Cardinals completed a regular-season conference sweep with the victory.
Six pitchers saw action for Carroll, including starter Nolan Fehrman, Josh Streu, Erik Jaschinski, Connor Kelly, Noah Hoffman and Connor Nolen.
Fehrman, a junior right-hander from Slinger, Wis., took the loss by allowing four earned runs on seven hits with no strikeouts and three walks through five complete innings.
Carroll is currently tied for third place in the conference standings and is seeking a trip to the prestigious CCIW Tournament for the third consecutive year.