By DONNY NADEAU
Saint Mary's Sports Information Director
 
AUBURNDALE, Fla. — After giving up 25 runs in their season-opening doubleheader losses to Neumann Sunday, the Saint Mary's University of Minnesota baseball team got downright defensive against Milwaukee School of Engineering.
 
The Cardinals limited the Raiders to a solo, seventh-inning run in cruising to a 9-1 victory in the opening game of the teams' nonconference doubleheader.
 
And Saint Mary's did their Game 1 defensive effort one better in the nightcap, as the Cardinals got a two-run single from Justin Weinberg (Eagan, Minn.) in the top of the 10^th inning—and three SMU pitchers combined on a 10-inning shutout—in a 2-0 Game 2 victory over the Raiders.
 
The Cardinals wasted no time flexing their offensive muscles in Game 1, scoring three times on four hits in their first at-bat—highlighted by an RBI single from Justin Weinberg (Eagan, Minn.) and a run-scoring sacrifice fly by Jake Barry (Tinley Park, Ill.).
 
Saint Mary's pushed that advantage to 4-0 when Joe Seegers (Oconomowoc, Wis.) laced a two-out double and scored on an MSOE error.
 
MSOE threatened in the fifth off Saint Mary's starter R.J. Brown (Broadview, Ill.), loading the bases with one out. Tyler Stilp (Lindstrom, Minn.) came on in relief of Brown and induced a 6-4-3 double play to get out of the inning.
 
Saint Mary's used three hits—including RBI singles by Dirk Drohner (Plover, Wis.) and Joey Costello (Victoria, Minn.)—and another Raider error to score three times in the bottom of the fifth, before icing the win with a pair of unearned runs in the sixth.
 
Seegers went 3-for-4 with a pair of runs scored, while Will Matthews (Geneva, Ill.) added two hits in three at-bats to pace the nine-hit Saint Mary's Game 1 attack. Brown picked up the pitching win, throwing 4 1/3 innings of two-hit ball—walking six and striking out six—with Stilp earning his first collegiate save, surrendering an unearned urn on one hit in 2 2/3 innings of work.
 
The quick-striking Cardinals weren't so quick-striking in Game 2 against the Raiders, however.
 
In fact, it wasn't until Weinberg's lead-off single in the top of the seventh that the Cardinals would record their first hit off MSOE starter Sam Crawford.
 
While Crawford was just three hits shy of recording the no-hitter on the hill for the Raiders, the Cardinals were getting a gem from James Green (East Bethel, Minn.)—who allowed just three hits in seven innings in his first collegiate start.
 
The Cardinals put another base runner on in the eighth—on Connor Cornell's (Plymouth, Minn.) first collegiate hit—and loaded the bases in the ninth with two outs, only to come up empty both times.
 
MSOE also loaded the bases in its half of the ninth inning, but Cardinal reliever Jake Kramlinger (White Bear Lake, Minn.) worked out of the one-out jam with a pair of groundouts—setting up Weinberg's two-out, 10^th-inning heroics.
 
Seegers got the Cardinals' game-winning rally started, reaching on a two-out error. Matthew Piechowski (Hutchinson, Minn.) was then hit by a pitch, giving Saint Mary's runners on first and second, and Weinberg delivered a single to right-center to score both—and give the Cardinals the sweep.
 
Weinberg accounted for three of the Cardinals' four hits in Game 2—all three coming on his last three plate appearances—while Cornell had the other. Kramlinger was the winning pitcher, allowing just two hits in two innings in relief of Green—who struck out five in his seven innings of three-hit work—with Austin Lenhardt (Winona, Minn.) working a one-hit 10^th for his first save in a Cardinal uniform.
 
The Cardinals (2-2 overall) are back in action on Tuesday, squaring off against Cabrini a nine-inning game slated for a 11:30 a.m. EST opening pitch.