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WINONA, Minn. — All season, Saint Mary's University baseball coach has been waiting for a day like Wednesday.
The sun was shining and the temperature was in the upper 50s — not the lower 30s and snowing.
Add to that SMU's first complete-game performance of the season from Cardinal pitcher
Matt Wilgenbusch (Durango, Iowa), and it was almost a picture-perfect day for the Cardinals.
Almost.
Despite Wilgenbusch's efforts — the sophomore right-hander limited Bethel to just six hits over seven innings — the Cardinals still came out on the short end of the conference decision, as the Royals held off the Cardinals 4-1 in the opening game of their Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader at Winona State's Loughery Field.
The mound was more of a revolving door in the nightcap, as Bethel feasted on Cardinal pitching, collecting six runs on nine hits against six SMU hurlers en route to a sweep-clinching 6-4 victory.
"Those were two, pretty well-played college baseball games," said SMU coach
Nick Whaley. "Matt pitched a heck of a game in the opener, we just weren't able to give him the (offensive) support that he deserved. It's really too bad to waste an outing like that.
"In games like those two, it's the little things that make the big difference," Whlaey added. "We didn't make plays when we needed to — it's been our Achilles' heel all season."
Control problems proved to be Wilgenbusch's downfall early on in the opener, as the SMU sophomore hit four batters and walked another in the game's first three innings. The final hit batter and the lone walk came back to haunt Wilgenbusch in the third as the Royals plated three runs — one on an RBI single by Brandon Carr and the other two on a two-run double by Dana Hegman.
Bethel pushed their lead to 4-0 with a single run in the top of the fourth, before SMU plated its lone run in the bottom of the fourth, as
Andrew Warren (Stillwater, Minn.) belted his first collegiate home run — a solo shot to lead off the inning.
Warren's home run was the lone extra-base hit among SMU's seven, Game 1 hits, which included two hits each from Warren and
Kevin Black (
Mahtomedi, Minn.). It did not include a hit from
Brady Knudsen (Racine, Wis.), who went 0-for-3 with a walk, snapping his career-high hitting streak at 21 straight.
Knudsen returned to form in Game 2, belting his team-leading third home run in the third to give the Cardinals a short-lived, 2-1 advantage. Bethel put together two-run innings in the fourth, fifth and seventh, while SMU managed only single runs in the fifth and sixth in falling for the 10th time in its last 11 games.
"It's tough coming up empty in two close ball games like that," said Whaley, whose team is back in action Thursday, traveling to St. Peter, Minn., to complete its suspended game against the Gusties — a game in which SMU leads 7-1 in the bottom of the fourth. "We just can't seem to get over the hump."
