St. Ambrose won the outright CCAC regular-season championship and is now one win away from winning the CCAC Tournament crown as well.

The Bees earned a spot in the title game by rallying past Saint Xavier 5-3 Friday afternoon at Slammers Stadium in Joliet, Ill.

As the lone unbeaten in the double-elimination tournament, SAU will await one of three remaining teams. Judson will play St. Francis and that winner will play Saint Xavier later Friday to determine the other finalist.

St. Ambrose (31-19) earned its spot after working around an uncharacteristic three errors. Two of those errors led to a pair of unearned runs as part of a three-run inning that gave Saint Xavier a 3-0 lead in the third.

The Bees, who had five base runners without the benefit of a hit through four innings, broke through in the fifth.

Quinn Flanagan reached on a two-out error, one of four SXU miscues in the contest, to get things started. Filip Milatovic recorded SAU's first hit and Michael Stupavsky followed with a double to left. Flanagan scored easily but pinch runner Danny Mouw was thrown out at the plate after getting tripped up at third base.

An inning later, St. Ambrose took the lead.

It took just two batters for the Bees to draw even. Bryce Vorwald led off with a single and Matthew McBrien launched a two-run homer to right to knot the game at 3-3.

SAU kept going. With one out, Eric Gonzalez doubled and one out later, Jake Pauley singled. A fielding error on the play allowed Pauley to score what ultimately proved to be the winning run. After stealing second, Pauley added an insurance run on Flanagan's base hit.

Noah Chase, who entered the game in the fourth with runners on second and third and no outs, escaped that inning unscathed and was in control from there.

Chase allowed just one runner, that a two-out intentional walk in the fourth that came before an inning-ending popup, through his first four innings of work.

He ran into some trouble in the eighth, allowing back-to-back two out hits. But Michael Rago backhanded a smash to third and dove to tag the bag to get the force out to end the frame.

After surrendering a leadoff walk to start the ninth, Chase gave way to Michael Moise. Moise allowed a one-out hit to put the potential tying runs on base. But he bounced back to strike out the next two hitters to close out the win.

Chase earned the win by allowing just two hits while striking out four over five scoreless innings. He entered for starter Aidan Pieniazek, who was charged with one earned run over three innings. Moise picked up the save.

Saturday's championship game is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. If necessary, a second game would be played Saturday night. The CCAC Tournament winner receives the league's automatic bid to the NAIA National Championship Opening Round.