Game 1 Box Score / Game 2 Box Score

ARDEN HILLS, Minn. — Last Wednesday, the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team's pitching staff showed just how stingy they could be as Stacy O'Malley (Lake Elmo, Minn.), Lindsay Mamer (Mankato, Minn.) and Kari Smith (Lourdes, Iowa) combined to shut out Augsburg twice, 1-0 and 4-0.

In the first game of Saturday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader against Bethel, the Cardinals — and O'Malley in particular — were at it again. O'Malley allowed just one hit in five innings, while striking out 11 of the 16 batters she faced in leading SMU to a 9-0 victory.

Unfortunately, the Cardinals' staff wasn't its usual stingy self in Game 2, as Mamer, Smith and Jennifer Gonerka (St. Paul, Minn.) were tagged for six hits and seven runs — and the Cardinals still won.

With the pitching staff unable to post that fourth straight shutout, the Cardinals' offense decided it was time to pick up the slack, as SMU banged out a season-high 25 hits — two short of the total number of hits the Cardinals had in their last four games combined — en route to a 20-7 victory.

"We've been waiting for a hitting day like that all season," said SMU coach Nikki Fennern, whose team improved to 9-1 in the MIAC and 18-6 overall. "The thing that we were most excited about is that we hit throughout the day — we didn't just hit the ball well in a couple of innings, we did it in every inning."

But especially in their final at-bats.

The Cardinals erupted for four runs in the top of the seventh inning of Game 1, then tallied nine runs in the top of the sixth to transform Game 2 from a tight nail-biter to a rout.

SMU, led by 3-for-5 performances from Ann Munzenmaier (Urbandale, Iowa) and Jackie Huegel (Alta Vista, Iowa), scored single runs in the first, second and third innings of the opener, then tallied a pair of runs in the fourth, before erupting for four in the seventh.

Despite scoring twice in each of the first three innings and once in the fourth, SMU was actually tied with the Royals after four innings of the nightcap as Bethel scored three times in the first and four times in the fourth. But the Cardinals, behind three-hit performances from Huegel, Jennifer Miller (Winona, Minn.), Mamer, Gina Rizzardi (Woodbury, Minn.) and Amy Edge (Mineral Point, Wis.) rebounded with four runs in the fifth and nine more in the sixth.