WINONA, Minn. — UW-Platteville entered Sunday's nonconference game against the Saint Mary's University baseball team boasting a gaudy .337 batting average and had scored 10 or more runs four times in its last seven games — and had belted a school-record 15 home runs in a sweep of Carroll on April 2.
In fact, the Pioneers arrived at Max Molock Field having collected 397 hits, including 188 for extra-bases, through their first 34 games.
The Cardinals in general — and pitchers
Teddy VanRanst (St. Paul, Minn.) and
Casey Jacobson (Apple Valley, Minn.) specifically — were not impressed.
VanRanst and Jacobson held the free-swinging Pioneers to just nine hits, while the Cardinal offense parlayed 10 hits — including doubles by
Ryan Archambault (Faribault, Minn.) and
Jake Lechner (Shoreview, Minn.) — into seven runs, as SMU cruised to a 7-3 nonconference victory.
"We the great pitching, Teddy grinded away for four-plus innings and Casey came on and really did an outstanding job in relief," said SMU coach
Nick Winecke. "(UW-Platteville) has been tearing the cover off the ball of late and it was good to see us come in a quiet them a bit.
"And offensively, we did a great job at the plate — we got a lot of big, two-strike hits for RBIs, and when can do that — and get pitching like we did, you are going to put yourselves in position to win a lot of games."
VanRanst kept the Pioneers off the board for the first three innings, but ran into trouble in the fourth, as a one-out walk, followed by a single and a double plated UW-Platteville's first run of the game. Enter Jacobson, who worked the final 5 2/3 innings, allowing just one run on five hits, while striking out three to earn his third win of the season.
The Cardinals scored early — and often — against UW-Platteville starter Steve Nelson, sandwiching single runs in the first and third innings around a three-run second to jump out to a 5-0 lead.
After giving two runs back in the fourth, SMU pushed its lead to 6-2 on an RBI single by
Kyle Ryan (St. Paul, Minn.), only to give the run back in the seventh. Lechner then delivered SMU's final run of the game on an RBI single to center, as SMU improved to 12-24 overall — marking the most wins since the Cardinals went 16-15 in 2005.
Lechner finished with three hits in four at-bats to pace the Cardinals' 10-hit attack, while Ryan,
Vince Lulic (Mendota Heights, Minn.) and Daniel Geraghty (Chicago, Ill.) all had two hits.
SMU is back in action on Wednesday, traveling to Moorhead, Minn., for a 1 p.m. Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader, before closing out its season on Saturday, hosting Macalester for a 1 p.m. conference twinbill at Max Molock Field.
