ARDEN HILLS, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University baseball team got off on the right foot in its Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader against Bethel Tuesday afternoon — scoring the game's first run in the top of the second inning.
From there, however, it was all downhill, as the Royals scored in four of their six at-bats en route to an 11-4 Game 1 victory, then scored the game's first five runs in rolling to a 5-2 victory in the nightcap.
The Cardinals and Royals played hot potato with the lead in the opener, as SMU scored once on an RBI groundout by Daniel Geraghty (Chicago, Ill.) in the top of the second, only to give up two runs in the bottom half of the inning. The Cardinals again regained the lead with two runs in the top of the third — getting an RBI sacrifice fly from
Andrew Warren (Stillwater, Minn.) and a run-scoring single by
Chris Bogie (St. Paul, Minn.) — only to give it right back as Bethel plated three in its half of the third.
And from there, the Royals would tack on four more in the fifth and two in the sixth to seal the Game 1 win.
Curt Swanson (Woodbury, Minn.) went 3-for-4 with a pair of runs scored, while Bogie and
Ryan Archambault (Faribault, Minn.) each added two hits to account for seven of the Cardinals' eight hits.
Brett Ferschweiler (Rochester, Minn.) was tagged with the pitching loss, scattering 12 hits and seven earned runs in four innings of work.
After managing eight hits in the opener, the Cardinals' bats could only bang out four in the nightcap — including two in the seventh when they plated their only runs on a two-run, two-out double by
Jake Lechner (Shoreview, Minn.). Lechner's seventh-inning double was the second of the game for the Cardinal junior, who went 2-for-3.
Bethel, meanwhile, continued to swing the hot bat in the nightcap, collecting nine hits, while scoring twice in the third, twice in the fifth and once in the sixth in completing the sweep.
The Cardinals, who fall to 2-6 in the MIAC and 9-18 overall, return to action on Saturday, when they play host to Augsburg in a 1 p.m. conference doubleheader at Max Molock Field.
