Game 1 Box Score /
Game 2 Box Score /
GameDay Online
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Saint Mary's University baseball coach
Nick Whaley got all he could ask for from his pitching staff Saturday afternoon against nationally ranked St. Thomas.
He got a combined eight-hitter in Game 1, as a trio of Cardinal hurlers held the high-powered Tommies — who were coming off a sweep of St. Olaf in which they'd scored 27 runs — to just five runs.
He got six pitchers to once again hold the Tommies below their season-high average, scattered 13 hits and allowing just nine runs.
About the only thing Whaley didn't get, however, was a victory, as St. Thomas swept the Cardinals, 5-0 and 9-3 to run its winning streak to eight straight.
"We've been waiting for quite a while for our pitchers to throw the way they did today," said Whaley, whose team dropped both ends of a conference doubleheader for the second time in a week. "I couldn't ask for much more out of them — they did a nice job, we just weren't able to come up with any key hits when we needed them.
"Give St. Thomas a lot of credit — they are ranked (No. 16) in the nation for a reason."
The Tommies broke a scoreless tie with a single run in the fourth, then added a pair of runs in both the fifth and sixth innings to ice the victory. SMU got two hits each from
Brady Knudsen (Racine, Wis.) and
Alex Schmidt (La Crosse, Wis.) as the Cardinal duo accounted for four of their six hits against UST starter Ryan Fahey, who picked up his first win of the season with the complete-game effort.
After scoring in their final three at-bats of Game 1, the Tommies picked up right where they left off, scoring in their first three at-bats of Game 2. UST scored three times in the first, twice in the second and once in the third to grab a 6-0 advantage, before SMU plated two of its three runs in the top of the fourth — one on a solo home run by Knudsen and the other on an RBI single by Schmidt.
Brandon Haugh (Easton, Minn.) got the Cardinals to within three, 6-3, with an RBI single in the fifth, but UST answered with one run in the fifth and two in the sixth to close out the scoring. Knudsen again led the Cardinals' offensive attack, going 3-for-4 with two runs and an RBI, extending his season- and career-high hitting streak to 16 straight.
"It's always disappointing to lose, but it's hard to feel too disappointed, because I thought we played fairly well against a very good team," said Whaley, whose Cardinals are back in action on Monday, traveling to St. Peter, Minn., to take on Gustavus. "We did a lot of good things out there today — we played well, we just didn't play well enough.
