ST. JOSEPH, Minn. — Just a day after using a pair of big innings to pull two key Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victories out of their hat, the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team ran out of late-inning magic against Saint Benedict.
The Cardinals — who scored six fifth-inning runs in beating Concordia 10-3 in Game 1 Saturday, then sent 16 batters to the plate in scoring 11 sixth-inning runs in a 12-4 Game 2 win — could have used one or two of those runs against the Blazers. Saint Benedict scored in the bottom of the eighth inning — in both games — in handing SMU 3-2 and 7-6 conference losses.
And, as if dropping back-to-back one-run games wasn't hard to enough to swallow, the sweep also knocked SMU to seventh in the conference standings, two losses behind Augsburg, Bethel and Saint Benedict with four MIAC games remaining in a race for the fourth and final playoff berth.
“We knew heading into the weekend that we could control our own destiny by winning out,” said SMU coach
Jen Miller, whose team closes out its conference schedule with two games vs. Macalester at home on Wednesday and two more at Carleton on Sunday. “It was great to see us swing the bats the way we did (Saturday), but today, we just didn't have that same late-inning magic.”
Both teams used a pair of single-run innings — SMU's in the second and fifth, and CSB's in the first and third — to take a 2-2 game into the eighth. The Cardinals put two runners on in their half of the inning, but failed to score, while CSB needed just one batter, Shannon Eveland, in the bottom of the eighth, as Eveland drilled a lead-off, walk-off home run off
Mallory Betzold (Farmington, Minn.) to give the Blazers the one-run victory.
In the nigthcap, the Cardinals appeared to have things well under control, scoring once in the second and third innings, then added back-to-back two-run innings in the fourth and fifth to take a 6-1 lead into the home half of the sixth inning.
In the sixth, the Blazers scored four times — three coming on Hanson's two-out, three run home run to right field — to cut the Cardinals' lead to one, 6-5. CSB would then erase that one-run deficit with yet another home run — this one a solo shot off the bat of Abby Richardson — to tie the game and send it into extra innings.
The Cardinals again threatened in the top of the eighth — and once again they left the go-ahead run stranded at third base. CSB then completed the sweep, as Eveland walked, was sacrificed to second and scored on a walk-off RBI single to right by Elle Borba.
Kellie Simons (Richfield, Minn.) went 3-for-4 with a pair of doubles and
Paige Carter (Rosemount, Minn.) was 2-for-4 in the opener, while Carter,
Katy Gannon (Roselle, Ill.), and
Morgan Stock (Amboy, Minn.) all had two hits in the nightcap. Carter collected her second home run of the season in Game 2, while Stock drove in a pair of second-game runs.
The Cardinals, who fall to 9-9 in the MIAC and 12-22 overall, close out their home schedule on Wednesday, playing host to Macalester in an MIAC doubleheader that will be the final collegiate home contests for Cardinal seniors
Hanna Schmitt (Rosemount, Minn.) and
Angie Diercks (Red Wing, Minn.)
