Game 1 Box Score /
Game 2 Box Score /
GameDay Online
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — It's coming down to crunch time for the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team, and if the Cardinals had any hope of another trip to the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament, they could not afford a third straight conference split.
Katy Gannon (Roselle, Ill.) and
Danielle Geske (Rosemount, Minn.) made sure that didn't happen.
Gannon went 6-for-8 with five runs scored, a double, home run and three RBIs, while Geske belted her team-leading sixth home run and drove in four runs, as the Cardinals posted a key 5-1, 9-4 sweep of Augsburg Thursday evening.
"This was big," said SMU coach
Jen Miller, whose team moved to 8-2 in the conference — holding on to the No. 2 spot in the conference standings, one game in front of Gustavus. "We gave away a couple of games (in splitting conference DHs vs. Bethel and Hamline) and everyone knew heading into tonight that we couldn't afford another split.
"Nothing less than a sweep would do."
Gannon did her part to get the Cardinals off on the right foot in Game 1, going 3-for-4 — including a two-run home run in SMU's three-run third inning — in leading the Cardinals to a 5-0 advantage. The Auggies foiled SMU pitcher
Sarah Fitzgerald's
(Colo, Iowa) shutout bid, getting a single run in the bottom of the seventh, but that was all the offense Augsburg would muster.
And while Fitzgerald was holding the Auggies to just seven hits and that one seventh-inning run, the Cardinals banged out 10 hits off two Augsburg pitchers — including three hits from Gannon and two each from Hannah Schmitt
(Rosemount, Minn.) and Kellie Simons
(Richfield, Minn.).
It was more of the same in Game 2, as SMU broke open a 2-2 game with three runs in the third and four more in the fifth. Gannon again carried the hot bat, going 3-for-4 with three runs scored, while
Mallory Betzold (Farmington, Minn.) was 4-for-4 and Geske was 2-for-3 with a two-run, third-inning home run.
"This was exactly what we needed — we needed to put together two solid games back-to-back and we did that against a very good (Augsburg) team," said Miller, whose team returns to conference play on Saturday, playing host to St. Catherine in a 1 p.m. doubleheader at Cotter Field. "This should give us a real confidence boost — hopefully, we can carry it over to Saturday."
