Game 1 Boxscore / Game 2 Boxscore

ST. JOSEPH, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team pushed its latest winning streak to four straight Thursday afternoon — but it was anything but easy.

In fact, nothing comes easy for the Cardinals of late.

Less than 24 hours after SMU rallied from a 1-0, two-out, seventh-inning deficit to beat Augsburg 2-1 in eight innings in the first game of its Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader sweep on Wednesday, the Cardinals found themselves in dire need of some more late-inning heroics against Saint Benedict.

And, for the second straight day, the Cardinals delivered in the clutch.

After getting a complete-game, five-hitter from Jenny Schipp (Oakdale, Minn.) in winning the opener 5-2, the Cardinals and Blazers were deadlocked at 1-1 through the first seven innings — as well as the first two extra innings — before Jenni Gutterman (Shoreview, Minn.) and Schipp delivered 10th-inning singles to lift SMU to a 3-1 victory in the nightcap.

"We sure didn't make it easy on ourselves — again," said SMU coach Nikki Fennern. "We struggled to string hits together (in the first game) against Augsburg — we got put runners in scoring position, we just couldn't get the key hits to drive them in.

"It was the same thing (in Game 2) against St. Ben's," continued Fennern, whose team banged out 10 hits through the first nine innings in the second game vs. the Blazers, but managed just the lone run. "Fortunately, we were able to put something together (in the 10th inning) when we needed it most.

"We dodged another bullet today, no question about that."

The Cardinals broke open a 3-2 game with back-to-back runs in the sixth and seventh innings en route to the Game 1 win vs. Saint Benedict, but it wasn't until the 10th inning of Game 2 that SMU could shake the pesky Blazers.

Playing international tie-breaker rules, SMU put pinch-runner Megan McGraw (Woodbury, Minn.) on second base, and, after a failed attempt to sacrifice McGraw over to third, Gutterman delivered an RBI single. After Danielle Geske (Rosemount, Minn.) flew out for the second out, Schipp padded the Cardinals' lead with their second RBI single of the inning.

"This was another hard-fought pair of wins," said Fennern. "It was a little closer than I would have liked, but a win is a win — and in this conference, every win is a big win."