Game 1 Box Score /
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WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team entered Tuesday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader against St. Thomas hoping to keep their conference tournament hopes alive.
St. Thomas, meanwhile, were already locked into the tournament's No. 1 spot and had little to play for in their final two games of the regular season.
Except of course for the matter of a few winning streaks, that is.
The Cardinals left Cotter Field as just another notch in the Tommies' belt Tuesday, as five-time MIAC regular-season champion St. Thomas used two big innings in each game to hand SMU 5-0 and 15-2 setbacks — extending UST's winning streaks to 22 straight this year, 54 straight against conference opponents and 17 in a row against the Cardinals.
The losses, coupled with Augsburg's 9-3 win over Bethel, also officially eliminated the Cardinals from the conference tournament chase.
"It's a tough way to end the season," said SMU coach
Jen Miller, whose team closed out its season 13-9 in the MIAC and 15-21 overall. "We knew we had our work cut out for us today. If we wanted to make the (conference) tournament, we had to do something no one has done in almost four years, and that's beat St. Thomas.
"But I honestly felt that, if we played our best game, we could do it."
And they almost did in the opener.
UST jumped out to a 2-0 first-inning lead, but SMU's
Sarah Fitzgerald (Colo, Iowa) and the rest of the Cardinals' held the high-powered Tommies at bay for the next five innings, only to give up three runs on a pair of home runs in the top of the seventh inning to ice the victory.
"We had our chances — for six innings we held (St. Thomas) to just those two first-inning runs," said Miller, whose team managed just three Game 1 hits off UST starter Maria Bye, but did have a runner on third base three times — only to come up empty each time. "We just couldn't come up with the clutch hits when we needed them. It's been the story our or season."
The Tommies picked up right where they left off in the second game, scoring three times in the first inning — including Steph Moores' two-run home run , the third of four UST homers on the afternoon.
This time, however, the UST bats never cooled off, as St. Thomas added one run in the third, three in the fourth, and eight more in the fifth en route to the 15-2, five-inning victory.
"I really thought we could give (St. Thomas) a run for their money," said Miller. "We needed to be perfect, and we weren't — it's that simple.
"It's a tough way to end the season, but I thought we did some good things this year, and, hopefully, we can bounce back and get back to the conference tournament next year."
