Mike Kraft/MDN Minot’s Braden Nelson flies a ball to right field during the third inning of a doubleheader against Dickinson on Tuesday at Corbett Field.

The Minot Vistas’ path to an 11th state title in program history got a bit bumpier following an ill-timed sweep at the hands of Dickinson on Tuesday at Corbett Field in their final conference doubleheader of the season.

The Vistas never led at any point of either game and couldn’t come up with the timely hit when they needed it the most, stranding 20 runners on base. Minot strung together 12 hits, but ultimately only came away with four runs in 14 innings, dropping a pair of 5-2 decisions in its final home games of the year.

Entering the night, the Vistas (30-14) sat tied for third with West Fargo in the Class AA standings with a 10-6 conference mark and could have finished as high as the No. 2 seed in the state tournament depending how the rest of the state results shaped out over the remaining few days of the regular season. With the pair of losses, the Vistas can do no better than the No. 4 seed and could drop all the way to the No. 6 spot.

“At this point it’s not a huge difference where you settle in the middle,” Minot coach Pat Arnston said. “It might just be about who you play, but now we know we’re going to be somewhere in the middle, not No. 3 or anything like that.”

The Roughriders (22-15) grabbed a 2-0 lead in the second inning of Game 1, scoring a pair of runs on a Camden Kubas single to right that brought in Cameron Wolf and Kevin Olsson, who scored as a result of Minot’s lone error of the contest. They tacked on a third run in the fifth on a sacrifice fly. Kubas continued his hot bat in the No. 9 spot with a triple to left and touched home when Jake Balliet lifted a ball deep enough into center to allow him to touch home.

Minot’s bats showed its biggest signs of life in the bottom half of the fifth, stringing together three hits and two runs to get within a run of tying the game. The top of the order fueled the offense. Tre Stewart took one for the team to put the leadoff man on and Kellan Burke and Brody Mueller followed with back-to-back base hits, Mueller’s single going for an RBI. A wild pitch allowed Burke to score Minot’s second run of the inning. Mueller was left stranded at third.

Dickinson got a pair of insurance runs in the seventh on RBI singles from Nick Sobolik and Balliet.

“We knew coming into the week that if we could go 3-1 this week that we would get out of that 7-10 play-in area, which is what you want,” Dickinson coach Ryan Crossingham said. “Thrilled with the guys. They played our brand of baseball – pitched well, got timely hits and played good defense.”

Brady Hecker picked up the Game 1 win for the Roughriders, going six innings, allowing two runs on seven hits, striking out five and walking four. Sobolik kept the Vistas off the board in the seventh for the save.

Mueller suffered the loss, going six innings as well. He surrendered three runs on six hits, striking out four and walking two.

The Roughriders didn’t wait to put Minot in a hole in the nightcap. Balliet crushed a two-run home run over the fence in right just two batters into the contest. And Dickinson still had some offense left in the frame, plating two more runs for a 4-0 advantage. Will Easum ripped a two-run triple to right to score Tyler Danbom and Christian Tibor.

“Home runs are huge,” Crossingham said. “Sometimes for Game 2s it’s hard to keep up the energy, especially after a big win, and then to come out and get a home run like that, it just brings all that energy forward and plus you get a lead early.”

Half of Minot’s four hits came in the first inning, leading to its only two runs of the game. Burke doubled and Tre Stewart scored on a sacrifice fly from Mueller. Oliver Deschamp – who had two of Minot’s hits in the game – delivered an RBI single with two outs to bring around Burke.

That was all the offense the Vistas could muster. They left the bases loaded in the fifth and put runners on first and second with no outs in the sixth. But a pair of putouts at third base followed by a fly out to left ended the threat.

“We didn’t do anything,” Arntson said. “We just felt like we were walking through today. We’re here but not here.”

Olsson tossed a complete-game four-hitter to complete the sweep and put Dickinson in a position where they could potentially leapfrog Minot in the standings if the Roughriders were to sweep Jamestown on Thursday.

“There were a few pressure points where Kevin and Brady really stepped up and that’s what they have to do,” Crossingham said. “They are two of our big guys and we expect them to do that and they did that today.”

The Vistas close out their regular season with a non-conference doubleheader at Williston today beginning at 5 p.m.

“Hopefully some guys are irritated enough to show up ready because we have to play again tomorrow,” Arntson said. “It’s non-conference, but as we hammer it into our guys all the time that that doesn’t matter. This was an important day and we showed up like it was a non-conference game, so hopefully this wakes us up a little bit because we have a talented group when we’re invested and interested, but it didn’t feel like that today.”