CAROL STREAM, Ill. — The Saint Mary's University of Minnesota baseball team entered Friday's nonconference game against Buena Vista boasting a 10-2 record—not to mention a five-game winning streak.
 
In those 12 games, the Cardinals erupted for 93 runs, including 14 in their most recent 4-1, 10-5 sweep of Northwestern last Tuesday.
 
Unfortunately, Saint Mary's bats picked the most inopportune times to go into a deep freeze against the Beavers, as the Cardinals stranded runners in scoring position in each of the last five innings—including a runner on third base in three of the game's final four frames—in falling to Buena Vista 4-3 at Pfund Stadium.
 
"We certainly had our changes, we just couldn't get the big hits when we needed them," said Saint Mary's coach Nick Winecke. "We just made way too many little mistakes, and that cost us."

The Cardinals did all their offensive damage in the game's first three innings, while Buena Vista waited until the sixth to get their offense shifted out of neutral.
 
Ben Buerkle got the Cardinal offense rolling early, as the sophomore drove in Saint Mary's first two runs—the first on an RBI groundout in the first and the second on a run-scoring single in the Cardinals' two-run third.
 
Buena Vista threatened in the top of the fifth, collecting its first two hits off Saint Mary's starter Steph Scatassa (Westchester, Ill.), but the junior induced bases-loaded double play to get out of the inning and preserve the Cardinals 3-0 advantage.
 
Scatassa couldn't work out of another jam in the sixth, as the Beavers took advantage of a pair of lead-off hits—including an RBI double by Tanner Truesdell—to score their first run of the game. And by the time Noah Paper grounded out to first, BVU had plated two more runs to knot the game at 3-3.
 
The Cardinals threatened in the bottom of the sixth—and again in the eighth—but both times came up empty.
 
A.J. Redders (Middleton, Wis.) and Cale Pieczynski (Plover, Wis.) were both hit by pitches to lead off the sixth inning, only to have BVU reliever Wes Onken work out of the jam, getting a strikeout and a pair of groundouts to keep the score deadlocked.
 
And in the eighth, Saint Mary's got a one-out single by Jake Barry (Tinley Park, Ill.) and two-out infield single by Jake Mencacci (Wheaton, Ill.) put runners on first and third, only to have Onken induced an inning-ending groundout to second.
 
Ryan Duncan led off the Beavers' ninth with a triple down the right-field line, and Neil Marshall delivered one-out single to left to give BVU its first lead of the game, 4-3.
 
Buerkle belted a one-out doubles in the Cardinals' half of the ninth, and moved to third on a wild pitch. Unfortunately, like in the sixth and eight, that is where Buerkle would stay, as Lucas Hadaway, BVU's third reliever of the afternoon, recorded back-to-back strikeouts to end the threat—and the Cardinals' winning streak.
 
Buerkle and Mencacci were the only Cardinals with more than one hit. Buerkle went 2-for-5 with a pair of RBIs and Mencacci was 2-for-4 with a run scored.
 
Scatassa went the first six innings on the mound for the Cardinals, allowing three runs—two earned—on four hits, while walking four and striking out six. Nathan Mathwig (Woodbury, Minn.) suffered in the loss in relief, surrendering one run on three hits over the game's final three innings.
 
The Cardinals (10-3 overall) are right back in action at 5 p.m. on Friday, squaring off against host Wheaton in a nine-inning nonconference contest.