GREENVILLE, S.C. ? Appalachian State University baseball's season came to an end with a 5-3 loss to The Citadel in a Southern Conference Tournament elimination game on Friday afternoon at Fluor Field.

No. 6-seeded Appalachian wrapped up its third-straight 30-win campaign with a 33-21 record, which included 27 wins in its final 34 games. Third-seeded The Citadel (36-21) advanced to face top-seeded Elon on Saturday at 9 a.m. The Bulldogs must beat the 22nd-ranked Phoenix twice to advance to Sunday's SoCon title game.

As was the case in Thursday's 6-5 loss to Georgia Southern, Appalachian was plagued by stranded base-runners on Friday. ASU left nine runners on base in Friday's setback, bringing its total in two SoCon Tournament losses to 20.

Things started off well for the Mountaineers, as they grabbed a 1-0 advantage in the top of the first inning when Wes Hobson tripled to deep left-center field and David Towarnicky drove him in with a hard-hit single through the left side of the infield.

After knotting the score at 1-1 in the second, the Bulldogs got the game's biggest hit in the bottom of the third when Sonny Meade belted a three-run home run to left-center field that gave them a 4-1 lead.

The Citadel threatened to blow the game wide open in the fifth when its first two hitters of the inning reached base on singles. However, ASU reliever Nick Daniels came on to strike out the first two batters he faced and shortstop Nick DeRose made perhaps the best defensive play of the tournament when he dove to snag Richard Jones' smash into the hole and threw to second from his knees for the force out that ended the inning and kept at least one run off the board.

DeRose's defensive gem appeared to change the tide of the game, as the Mountaineers loaded the bases with nobody out in the top of the sixth, but Bulldog starter Matt Crim took the momentum right back by wiggling his way out of the jam with a strikeout, foul out and groundout that kept ASU in a 4-1 hole.

Things became even more bleak for the Apps in the bottom of the sixth when The Citadel stretched its lead to 5-1 on a run-scoring flare single to right field by Sid Fallaw.

Towarnicky cut the deficit to 5-2 with a sacrifice fly in the top of the eighth and Appalachian put the tying run on base with one out in the ninth when Rand Smith made it 5-3 with an RBI single to right center. However, that would be as close as ASU would get, as Crim induced two fly balls to complete his 145-pitch, complete-game gem. The Citadel's senior southpaw was the story of the game, as he surrendered only two earned runs and struck out eight for his second complete-game victory in less than a week.

Hobson, Isaac Harrow and Jeremy Dowdy accounted for six of the Mountaineers' eight hits with two apiece. Towarnicky drove in two of the Apps' three runs while Smith's ninth-inning single stretched his season-ending hitting streak to 15 games and gave him hits in 52-of-54 contests this season.

Appalachian's four pitchers ? Matt Andress, Daniels, Chris Patterson and Zach Quate ? combined to record 15 of The Citadel's 24 outs via strikeouts. Andress (3-6) fanned a season-high eight in four innings of work but allowed four runs to suffer the loss.

Despite the heart-breaking tournament setbacks, the Apps tied ASU's 2007 club for the most wins by a Mountaineer team since the 1986 squad won 40 contests. The senior class of Daniels, DeRose, Josh Dowdy (Raleigh, N.C./Wakefield), Aubrey Edens, Harrow, Quate and Smith compiled 122 victories during their four seasons, the most by an Appalachian group of seniors since the Class of 1989 left with 124 wins.