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WINONA, Minn. — It was like the Saint Mary's University and Hamline baseball teams were playing a game of copy-cat Tuesday afternoon at Max Molock Field.

The Pipers scored in five of seven innings in the opener of the team's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader.

And the Cardinals answered by scoring in five of the seven innings.

In fact, the Pipers scored single runs in the third, fourth and sixth innings — and so did the Cardinals.

Unfortunately for SMU, that's where the game tilted in Hamline's favor, as the Pipers' 3-1 edge in first-inning scoring was one better than the Cardinals' 2-1 seventh-inning advantage, as Hamline held on for a 7-6 victory.

“Despite the way the game started, we put ourselves in a great position to win the ball game,” said Winecke. “We just weren't able to come up with the big hit when we needed it. But to be able to come back from that (3-0 first-inning deficit) and be in position to win, that's definitely a postive.”

The nightcap proved to be yet another children's game, this time it was tag — and the Cardinals were it.

For the entire game.

The Pipers erupted for four run in the first inning and two more in the second — and SMU could never catch them — as Hamline completed the conference sweep with a 6-0 victory.

“The first inning killed us today,” said SMU coach Nick Winekce, whose team surrendered seven of its 13 runs in the first inning. “You just can't keep spotting teams early leads like that and expect to be able to come back. We did a nice job of battling back in the first game, we just didn't have any answers in Game 2.”

Hamline took advantage of an SMU error to score its three first-inning runs in the opener, with SMU cutting the gap to 3-1 on an Andrew Warren (Stillwater, Minn.) fielder's choice groundout. The two teams would exchange single runs in the third, fourth and sixth innings, with Hamline making it a 7-4 game with a run in the top of the seventh.

SMU scored twice in the bottom of the seventh — the first on a Joe Krause (St. James, Minn.) groundout and the second on a Zach Olberding (Maplewood, Minn.) solo home run — and had the tying run on first base with two outs, but relief pitcher Matt Mullendore got Warren leaning the wrong way and picked him off first for the game's final out.

Hamline chased SMU starter Andy Pass (Prescott, Wis.) after just two-thirds of an inning in Game 2, collecting four runs on four hits, then added two more runs in the second to push their lead to 6-0.

And that was more than enough run support for Mullendore, who went from notching his first save of the season in Game 1, to posting his first shutout of the season in Game 2, allowing just four SMU hits — two off the bat of Olberding — in blanking the Cardinals for the third time in their last four games.

“We didn't attack the baseball offensively in the second game,” said Winecke. “I liked the way we battled at the plate (in the opener), but we didn't have that same approach in Game 2.

“You aren't going to win many ball games getting just four hits — and it's tough to win games when you are constantly trying to dig yourselves out of early holes,” added Winecke, whose pitchers allowed 20 hits in the two games combined — including 11 for extra bases. “Defensively, aside from that first-inning error in Game 1, we were pretty solid — but that's just one facet of the game, we have to get better in the other two.”