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WINONA, Minn. — There's something about playing Saint Benedict that makes Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball coach Jen Miller's hair turn a little gray.

Heading into Saturday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader at the SMU Field, the Cardinals and Blazers had played four straight one-run games — with both teams winning 3-2 in 2009, while the Blazers won a pair of eight-inning games, 3-2 and 7-6, a year ago.

So it was no surprise when Saturday's two games were both decided by one run.

Unfortunately for Miller and the Cardinals, the two one-run games meant a split in the conference DH, as SMU opened with a 3-2 victory, while CSB took advantage of an error and a strikeout-passed ball to score three seventh-inning runs and beat the Cardinals 3-2 in the nightcap.

“They were two very good games, unfortunately we were only able to get one win out of it,” said Miller. “If these games prove anything, it's that you need to score runs and you need to keep scoring runs if you are going to be successful in this conference.

“We kind of went flat after the first inning of the first game, and we gave them five outs (in the seventh inning) of the second game. We kind of shot ourselves in the foot.”

Mallory Betzold (Farmington, Minn.) was the star of the opener, as the senior hurled a complete-game seven-hitter, striking out seven, while walking just one. Betzold also did the majority of the Cardinals' damage at the plate — going 2-for-2 with a two-run, first-inning home run.

SMU scored all three of its Game 1 runs in the first inning. Erin Stenseth (Eau Claire, Wis.) led off with a triple and scored on Haley Ohl's (Bloomington, Minn.) RBI single to center. Betzold delivered her first home run of the season one out later, giving the Cardinals a 3-0 advantage.

Saint Benedict finally got to Betzold in the fifth, as Kristen Herges delivered a two-out single through the left side to plate CSB's first run of the game. The Blazers would threaten again in the top of the seventh — putting runners on second and third with nobody out — but Betzold worked out of the jam, allowing just a single run to seal the win.

SMU got on the board first in the second game, as Joanna Mangan (Chicago, Ill.) broke a scoreless tie with a two-out, RBI single to score Katy Gannon (Roselle, Ill.) from second.

CSB scored three times in the top of the seventh, taking advantage of a Cardinal fielding error and a dropped third strike that resulted in a run, to take a 3-1 advantage.

The Cardinals threatened in their final at-bat, getting another RBI single from Mangan to score Gannon and cut the lead to 3-2, but, with runners on second and third and two out, CSB pitcher Rachel Nelson got Ohl to ground out to short to end the threat, and the game.

Gannon finished 3-for-3 with a pair of runs scored in the second game to account for three of the team's 10 hits, while Mangan was 2-for-3 and drove in both Cardinal runs.

The Cardinals (1-3 MIAC, 8-6 overall) are back in action on Tuesday, traveling to St. Olaf for a 4 p.m. conference doubleheader.