The defending champions saw their reign come to a crashing halt Monday, as the Redmen baseball team dropped the deciding third game of their CIBA Northern Conference semi-final against the Concordia Stingers. With the win, Concordia qualifies for the National Championship tournament while McGill will be left at home wondering what could have been. After taking home the title last year, the Redmen sputtered to an 0-4 start. They closed the season in much better form and even took the first game of the series against the Stingers 9-3 on Sunday afternoon. That lead was squandered, however, as Concordia took the last two games by scores of 5-2 and 9-0. “There could have been [a championship hangover]. You know, guys were still on a high after winning, there’s still a lot of talk about the rings and all the garments we got that had ‘national champions’ on it. The minute that championship was done, for me it’s done,” Head Coach Ernie D’Alessandro said. “We were a little disappointed with how everything turned out. Short season, things get off to a slow start, and sometimes it’s tough to right the ship. We lost a couple of guys that we didn’t expect to lose, we had a bunch of injuries, and things just never seemed to turn around for us.”