Game 1 Box Score /
Game 2 Box Score /
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ST. PAUL, Minn. — It was a new day — and the same result — for the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team.
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, that's both good — and bad.
For the third straight day, the Cardinals opened their doubleheader with a victory Tuesday afternoon, as SMU broke a 1-1 tie with a two-run home run off the bat of
Danielle Geske (Rosemount, Minn.), then held off a seventh-inning Hamline rally for a 3-2 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory.
For the third straight day, the Cardinals closed their doubleheader with a loss, as the Pipers turned the tables in Game 2, holding off a seventh-inning SMU rally en route to a 4-3 win.
"I thought we played fairly well in the first game, we just couldn't string any timely hits together (in the second game)," said SMU coach
Jen Miller, whose team has not lost the first game of a doubleheader since falling to Buena Vista 4-2 on March 8 and has not been swept in a twinbill since opening the season with back-to-back losses to nationally ranked UW-Eau Claire. "We had our chance to win the second game, too — our bats just fell silent (after scoring twice in the top of the seventh)."
The Cardinals were clicking on all cylinders early in the opener, scoring a single run in the fourth on an RBI single off the bat of Hannah Schmitt
(Rosemount, Minn.). Hamline pulled even in the bottom of the fifth, but it could have been worse, had Geske, SMU's centerfielder, not robbed the Pipers' Sara Mickelson of a two-run home run, crashing through the outfield fence while making a game-saving catch.
And while her defensive efforts held the Pipers to that one fifth-inning run, it was Geske's bat that proved to be the difference in the game, as the Cardinal junior belted her team-leading fifth home run of the season — a two-run, sixth-inning shot that gave SMU the lead for good.
Geske drove in the game's first run in the nightcap, giving SMU a short-lived, 1-0 first-inning advantage. The Pipers responded with two runs in the third, one in the fourth and another in the sixth to take a 4-1 edge into the final inning.
An inning that started strong — then fizzled — for the Cardinals.
Cassie Otte (Randolph, Minn.) — who pushed her career-best hitting streak to 21 straight with back-to-back 2-for-4 performances against the Pipers — led off the seventh with a single and scored on
Katy Gannon's
(Roselle, Ill.) second collegiate home run to pull the Cardinals within a run, 4-3, with no one out.
That, however, was as close as the Cardinals would get.
"We had our chances," Miller said. "We just didn't get the key hits when we needed them. It's tough to keep splitting (doubleheaders) like this, but we've just got to keep plugging away."
