CARY, N.C.—In a game filled with countless emotional highs and lows, Catawba had the final celebration with a 10-9 win over Point Loma on Tuesday at the USA Baseball National Training Complex.

It was an elimination game at the NCAA National Championships, and Catawba will move on to play Tampa on Wednesday. Point Loma’s season, a wild ride that included a PacWest Conference regular season championship, a PacWest tournament title, a regional crown and a super regional championship, ends on a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth.

Point Loma wraps up at 50-13 while Catawba is now 49-13.

The Sea Lions took the early lead over the Indians, whom they had beat 11-5 in their first game at the World Series on Saturday. Point Loma scored three in the third and two more times in the fourth to take a 5-0 lead. Hank Smith, Mason Cook and Aiden Arriaga had RBI’s to jump start the effort, and Smith added two more runs with a base hit in the fourth.

Point Loma seemed in control and their offense was in high gear, even leaving nine runners on base through the first five stanzas.

But the momentum flipped in the bottom of the fifth. Hunter Adkins got the Indians on the board with a two-run homer off of Vaughn Neckar, who had pitched well and worked out of any trouble he had to that point.

What followed was hard to believe. Sea Lion pitching allowed four straight walks—and there would be six total from three different pitchers before the inning was over. The Indians would mix in three hits, including another two-base knock by Adkins, to take a 7-5 lead. 13 batters came to the plate before the inning was over.

Catawba added an unearned run in the sixth to make it 8-5. Point Loma followed a similar path to get a run back without a hit in the seventh to make it 8-6.

That’s how it stayed until the ninth inning. Down two, Jake Schwartz led off with a single, and Owen May followed with a base hit. A sacrifice bunt moved both runners up a base. After a strikeout, the Sea Lions were down to their last out.

Bring up Josiah Rodriguez. The third baseman promptly laced a single that would score both runners and tie the contest at 8-8. Smith followed with a rope to the right center field fence, scoring a sprinting Rodriguez from first base with the go-ahead run, and it was now 10-9 Sea Lions heading into the bottom of the ninth.

Smith, who went to the mound in relief in the eighth and had a 1-2-3 inning, fanned the first batter in the ninth. But a walk followed and then Brandon Crabtree lined a double down the left field line to score the tying run. A deep fly ball out moved Crabtree to third, and Adkins then lined the first pitch that he saw up the middle for the winning run, sending the Indians into celebration in shallow right field.

Adkins was the star of the game with five hits in five at-bats and five RBI. Smith had three hits for the Sea Lions and four RBI, while Rodriguez and May had two hits each.

Point Loma’s season, with the 50 wins, is second in Sea Lion history only to their 2022 team that went 51-10 and reached the NCAA Championship final.