A fantastic second half of the season ended with a CCAC Tournament runner-up finish as St. Ambrose fell to No. 10 Saint Xavier in the championship match of the conference tournament Tuesday night.

After starting the season with nine straight losses, the Bees rallied to go 14-5 the rest of the way. That included a 3-2 win over the No. 2 seed Trinity Christian in the tournament semifinals Monday.

But the run ended at the hands of the nationally-ranked Cougars.

Saint Xavier (23-2) ended SAU's season with a 25-13, 25-13, 25-17 win to add a conference championship to its regular-season crown.

St. Ambrose (14-14) fell behind early in each of the three sets and never recovered.

While the Cougars finished with 34 kills and just eight hitting errors for a .491 hitting percentage, the Bees accumulated more errors (24) than kills (23) to finish with a negative percentage.

Jason Bageanis collected eight kills and had just two errors. The rest of the team had a combined 15 kills and 22 attack errors.

Skyler Marushige put down six kills. Jaylen Clark had three and Nick Fox and Jeramie Gutierrez each added two. Ricardo Ubior and Colin Teresi each had one kill.

Jake Snyder led St. Ambrose with 22 assists. Snyder, Jaylen Clark and Avery Clark shared team-high honors with two digs apiece.

SAU had just a single block in the match and registered 10 serving errors without a single ace.