WINONA, Minn. — Opportunity knocked for the Saint Mary's University baseball team Monday afternoon — and knocked, and knocked, and knocked.
Finally, the Cardinals'
John Swenson (Eagan, Minn.) answered.
After striking out looking with two outs and runners on base three times through six innings in the second game of their nonconference doubleheader against Luther Monday, the Cardinals finally made the most of a scoring opportunity.
With pinch-runner
Joe O'Neill (St. Paul, Minn.) on second with nobody out, Swenson executed a perfect bunt down the third base line. Luther third baseman Ryan Bahnemann charged the bunt, but his throw — which would not have gotten the speedy Swenson — was off the mark, allowing O'Neill to score the game-winning run in SMU's 6-5 victory.
It was the Norse who took advantage of a seventh-inning error to win the opener, as Luther scored four seventh-inning runs — three following a two-out Cardinal error — en route to a 6-1 victory.
“It was a tale of two tapes,” said SMU coach
Nick Winecke, whose team — playing its 12th and 13th games in a 10-day span — snapped a six-game losing streak wit the Game 2 win. “In the first game, we had opportunities, but we didn't execute when we needed to. It was more of the same early in the second game — you can't strike out looking with two out and runners on base like we did — but when we needed it most (in the seventh inning) the guys came through.”
Offensively, the Cardinals could not get things on track in the opener, managing just six hits and a lone fifth-inning run. But, thanks to the stellar relief pitching of Willie Shetka (West St. Paul, Minn.), SMU trailed just 2-1 heading into the seventh inning. In the seventh, the Norse parlayed three hits, a bases-loaded walk and an error into four runs to put the game out of reach.
Shetka, who came in for starter
Jack Dwyer (Minnetonka, Minn.) — who was forced out of the game trailing 1-0 with one out in the top of the second after taking a line shot off the leg — scattered three hits and one run through 4 2/3 innings, before running into trouble in the seventh.
Andrew Warren (Stillwater, Minn.) collected two of SMU's six Game 1 hits, going 2-for-3, while
Zach Olberding (Maplewood, Minn.) drove in the Cardinals' lone run with an RBI single in the fifth.
For the second game in a row, spotted the Norse a 1-0 advantage in Luther's opening at-bat. Unlike the opener, however, this time around, the Cardinals answered right back, scoring three times in the bottom of the first — including two on an RBI double by
Ryan Archambault (Faribault, Minn.).
The two teams traded runs in both the second and third innings — SMU's coming on
Curt Swanson's (Woodbury, Minn.) run-scoring single in the second and Archambault's first home run of the season in the third to — to give the Cardinals a 5-3 advantage.
Luther scored twice in the fifth to knot things up at 5-5 — and set up Swenson's seventh-inning heroics.
Archambault was one of three Cardinals with two hits in the nightcap, as the senior went 2-for-2 with a run scored and three RBIs. Swenson, Swanson and
Kyle Ryan (St. Paul, Minn.) also finished with a pair of hits.
Justin Kronebusch (Altura, Minn.) picked up his first collegiate pitching win, throwing two innings of one-hit relief.
“I give our guys a lot of credit, they just battled all day,” said Winecke, whose Cardinals (7-13 overall) return to conference play on Wednesday, playing host to Carleton in a 2:30 p.m. doubleheader at Max Molock Field. “This is a great group of guys who battle their butts off for us and it was nice to see them reap the benefits of that hard work.
“I'm very proud of the way they played.
