Game 1 Boxscore / Game 2 Boxscore

NORTHFIELD, Minn. — It took four days and two trips to Northfield, but the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team finally got its Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader in against Carleton.

And while it may have taken a long time to finally play the games — it didn't take long for the Cardinals to lock up two more conference wins.

SMU rode the pitching of Jenny Schipp (Oakdale, Minn.), who tossed her second straight no-hitter in Game 1, and the hitting of Jenni Gutterman (Shoreview, Minn.), who was a perfect 8-for-8 in the two games, as the Cardinals closed out their MIAC schedule with a 9-0, 7-1 sweep of Carleton.

"We needed these games," said SMU coach Nikki Fennern, whose team locked up a share of second place in the MIAC and the No. 3 seed in the upcoming conference tournament, losing out to Gustavus in the second tiebreaker — record vs. conference teams with winning records (GAC is 6-2 while SMU was 5-3) — for the No. 2 seed. "We've been struggling offensively of late and it was good to see us break out.

"I think we got our groove back a bit."

Groove or not, it doesn't really seem to matter when Schipp is on the mound. The SMU senior — who tossed a 13-strikeout no-hitter last Thursday in a 3-1 victory over UW-La Crosse — was untouchable against Tuesday, striking out seven Knights in the six-inning win. Schipp has now gone 30 straight innings without giving up an earned run — including complete-game shutouts over Concordia, Macalester and Carleton.

Schipp got all the offensive support she would need off the bat of Jenny Giannini (River Grove, Ill.), who highlighted SMU's nine-run Game 1 outburst with a three-run home run. Gutterman, meanwhile, went 4-for-4 with a triple and three RBIs, extending her hitting streak to a season-best 15 straight.

Make that 16 straight, as the SMU senior posted her second-straight 4-for-4, one-triple effort — marking the 15th time this season that Gutterman has had two or more hits in a game and giving her at least one hit in 30 of the Cardinals' 34 games.

"Our goal coming into this (doubleheader) was to get our offense back on track," said Fennern, whose team closes out its regular-season at home on Wednesday, playing host to UW-River Falls in a nonconference doubleheader. "I think we accomplished that — now we need to go out and take care of business (against River Falls) and get ready for the (MIAC) playoffs."