Game 1 Boxscore / Game 2 Boxscore

ST. PAUL, Minn — All last season, St. Thomas proved to be the bully on the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference playground, as the Tommies went 25-0 against conference schools en route to the regular-season and conference-tournament titles — not to mention the school's first-ever national championship.

And, unfortunately for the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team, the Tommies have picked up right where they left off this season, as UST bullied its way to a 7-0, 8-2 sweep of the Cardinals Wednesday afternoon.

St. Thomas, which has now won 35 straight vs. MIAC opponents, dating back to a loss to Gustavus late in the 2003 season, pounded three SMU pitchers for 15 runs and 23 hits. The biggest Tommie bully proved to be Nikki Conway — younger sister of SMU senior Krista Conway (Mendota Heights, Minn.) — who went 6-for-8 with a pair of home runs and three RBIs.

And while UST's bats were feasting on SMU pitcher, Tommie pitchers had the Cardinals swinging at air — literally – as SMU struck out 26 times in the two games.

The Tommies got all the offense they would need with a single run in the first inning. But UST wasn't about to stop there, scoring once in the third, twice in both the fourth and fifth, and once in the sixth to complete the shutout win.

SMU appeared to have righted its ship in Game 2, as Amy Lang (Oshkosh, Wis.) delivered a one-out, two-run home run to right center to give the Cardinals an early 2-0 advantage.

That, however, was all the offense SMU would manage — and the Tommies were just warming up, answering the Cardinals' two-run first with two runs of their own, then added three in the second and single runs in the third, fourth and sixth to move to 4-0 in the MIAC.

The Cardinals, who had their two-game winning streak with the Game 1 loss, fall to 2-2 in the MIAC and 10-6 overall heading into Thursday's nonconference home doubleheader against UW-River Falls.