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CAROL STREAM, Ill. — For the second day in a row, the Saint Mary's University baseball team needed a late-inning rally to beat Wheaton (Ill.).

And, unfortunately for SMU coach Nick Winecke, for the second day in a row, that late-inning rally fell one run short.

The Cardinals scored a pair of runs in the top of the eighth inning to pull within one against the host Thunder, but Wheaton — which survived a pair of three-run innings in the eighth and ninth to beat SMU 7-6 on Friday — held Saint Mary's scoreless in the ninth to escape with the 5-4 nonconference win.

"It was another one of those games where we gave up a big inning and it came back to haunt us," said Winecke. "But on the flip side, if you look at the entire weekend, we had four bad innings — and 32 pretty good innings. Which means we are doing a lot of things right, we've just got to tighten up a few things.

"It's those innings where we are giving up the crooked number that are killing us — they were the difference between us going 3-1 on the weekend or 1-3."

Saturday's rematch with the Thunder began in much the same way as Friday's did, as Wheaton — which plated six first-inning runs in the teams' first meeting — jumped out to a 4-0 lead after its first at-bat on Saturday.

SMU cut the deficit to 4-2 with an RBI single by Paul LaNasa (Mahtomedi, Minn.) in the third and a bases-loaded walk by Willie Doll (Amherst, Wis.) in the fourth.

Wheaton pushed its lead to three, 5-2, with a solo run in the fifth, but the Cardinals weren't finished, as David Barry (Apple Valley, Minn.) delivered a one-out, two run single to cut the gap to 5-4.

That, however, would be where the Cardinals' rally stalled, as Wheaton pitcher Miles Veth notched a pair of strikeouts to end the threat.

Barry finished 3-for-3 at the plate, while Doll chipped in a pair of hits, as the Cardinal duo accounted for five of the team's eight hits. Steph Scatassa (Westchester, Ill.) went all eight innings on the mound for SMU, scattering 11 hits, while walking three and striking out six.

"I thought we played some pretty good baseball all weekend," said Winecke. "I would have loved to come away with a few more wins, but we'll be all right — if there's one thing I know about this team, it's that we'll keep battling day-in and day-out."

The Cardinals (4-10 overall) are scheduled to be back in action — weather permitting — on Wednesday, traveling to La Crosse, Wis., for a 1 p.m. nonconference doubleheader against UW-La Crosse.