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COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University and Saint John's baseball teams entered Wednesday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader as mirror images.

Both had not played since April 7, where both dropped both games of a conference twinbill — extending their losing streaks to three straight.

Both had played 17 games, and both owned an 0-2-conference record and a 9-8 overall mark.

And when SMU's Tyler Krysiak (Bloomington, Minn.) retired the Johnnies in order to end the seventh inning of Game 2, that image staring back at the Cardinals looked exactly the same.

Saint John's picked up the win in Game 1, as the Johnnies took advantage of an SMU fielding error in the bottom of the seventh inning to score the game-winning run and secure a 6-5 victory.

The Johnnies' picked up where they left off in the nightcap, taking leads of 2-0 and 3-1, but the Cardinals bounced back, rallying from both deficits to beat SJU 11-7 and earn the conference split.

“The guys battled all day,” said SMU coach Nick Winecke. “We had our chances in the first game, but couldn't get the key hit when we needed it, and (Saint John's) got a break in the seventh and it cost us.

“I was really proud of the way we bounced back (in the second game),” added Winecke, whose Cardinals — who move to 1-3 in MIAC play and 10-9 overall — are right back in action on Thursday, traveling to Arden Hills, Minn., for a 2:30 p.m. conference doubleheader against Bethel. “When we went down five runs in that second game, the guys could have easily thrown in the towel — especially after the (heartbreaking) way the first game ended.

“But they didn't — they just kept battling and came up with those key hits at key times that we didn't get in the first game.”

The Cardinals scored twice in their first at-bat in the opener, but the Johnnies responded with five runs in their half of the first inning to take a 5-2 advantage. SMU pulled even in the second, scoring on a wild pitch, a Kyle Servais (Westby, Wis.) sacrifice fly and Paul LaNasa's (Mahtomedi, Minn.) steal of home.

The game would remain deadlocked at 5-5 until the bottom of the seventh, when a one-out SMU error allowed SJU's Max Forester to race all the way around to third, where he scored on Geno Larkin's RBI single.

David Barry (Apple Valley, Minn.) highlighted the Cardinals' offensive attack in the opener, as the sophomore recorded his first collegiate four-hit game — going 4-for-4 with two runs scored — to account for four of the team's five hits.

The Johnnies were again productive in their first at bat in Game 2, scoring twice to take a 2-0 advantage. SMU answered with a LaNasa RBI single in the third to cut the gap to 2-1, but SJU regained its two-run lead with a solo run of its own in the bottom of the third.

SMU parlayed two hits and an SJU error into four runs in the fourth inning, then picked up its second straight four-run inning in the fifth — highlighted by a two-run single off the bat of Drew Denning — to give the Cardinals the lead for good, 9-6. The Cardinals would add single runs in the sixth and seventh to push their advantage to 11-7, and Krysiak came on in the seventh to shut the door and preserve the split.

Denning took a page out of Berry's offensive book, as the SMU sophomore fueled the Cardinals' eight-hit Game 2 attack, going 3-for-4 with 3 RBIs — and finishing as the only SMU player with more than one hit.