ST. PETER, Minn. — Less than 24 hours after giving up 16 runs in a 16-6 nonconference loss to UW-La Crosse, the Saint Mary's University baseball team decided to take a chapter out of the Eagles' playbook — score early, and often.
And by doing so, the Cardinals didn't give host Gustavus a chance in the opening game of their Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader, as SMU erupted for seven runs in the third inning and never looked back in beating the Gusties 10-3.
Unfortunately for the Cardinals, Game 2 didn't go quite as nicely as SMU gave up three runs in the first inning and two more in the second as Gustavus earned a split with a 8-2 victory.
“We played very well all day,” said SMU coach
Nick Winecke. “I thought we hit the ball as well in the second game as we did in the first, we just seemed to hit everything at someone.
“After not playing very well in any facet of the game (against UW-La Crosse) yesterday, it was good to see us put together a solid effort today.”
After spotting the Gusties an early 1-0 lead in a second-inning run, the Cardinals put the game out of reach in the top of the third — taking advantage of four hits and two GAC errors to score seven times to take a 7-1 advantage.
Gustavus got two of those runs back in the fourth, but an RBI double by
Andrew Warren (Stillwater, Minn.) in the sixth, and an RBI double by
Kyle Ryan (St. Paul, Minn.) and a run-scoring single by
Curt Swanson (Woodbury, Minn.) in the seventh sealed the win for the Cardinals.
Warren and Swanson each finished with two hits in the opener, with Warren driving in a pair of runs, while
Andrew Ruf (Chippewa Falls, Wis.) allowed just one earned run in collecting his second win of the season with a complete-game six-hitter.
SMU picked up where it left off early in the nightcap, stringing together three first-inning hits and getting an RBI groundout by
Ryan Archambault (Faribault, Minn.) to take a 1-0 lead.
The Gusties, however, answered with three runs in their first at-bat, then added two more in the second to take a 5-1 lead. GAC would make it 8-1 with its second three-run inning in the fifth, before SMU closed out the scoring with a single run in the top of the sixth.
Ryan and
Joe O'Neill (St. Paul, Minn.) each had two hits to pace the Cardinals' seven-hit attack, while Archambault drove in both Cardinal runs with his first-inning groundout and sixth-inning single
The Cardinals, who move to 2-4 in the MIAC and 9-16 overall, are back in action on Tuesday, traveling to Bethel for a 2:30 p.m. conference doubleheader against the Royals.
