By DONNY NADEAU
Saint Mary's Sports Information Director
 
KISSIMMEE, Fla. — Coming off an MIAC Rookie of the Year season a year ago, James Green (East Bethel, Minn.) has picked up right where he left off.
 
The hard-throwing right-hander kicked off his sophomore campaign throwing six innings of shutout, one-hit ball — not to mention seven strikeouts — in the Saint Mary's University of Minnesota baseball team's season-opening 11-1 win over Cabrini last Sunday.
 
Thursday afternoon, Green was back on the hill — and back to his same old self.
 
For the second straight start, Green threw six shutout innings — allowing five hits and striking out nine — before surrendering his first three runs of the season in the seventh inning of the Cardinals' nine-inning nonconference game against Neumann.
 
Fueled by Green's effort — not to mention scoring the game's first eight runs — the Cardinals got back on the winning track, dealing Neumann a 9-3 setback.
 
After coming up empty in their first two at-bats, the Cardinals got to work, scoring five times in the top of the third inning — getting back-to-back RBI singles from Andy Tepp (Stevens Point, Wis.) and Will Matthews (Geneva, Ill.), and a bases-loaded walk by Dirk Drohner (Plover, Wis.), and scoring the final two runs on a pair of Neumann fielding errors.
 
A Matt Piechowski (Hutchinson, Minn.) run-scoring triple and a sacrifice fly by Tepp in the fourth inning pushed the Saint Mary's advantage to 7-0, and another sacrifice fly from Tepp made it 8-0 heading into the seventh.
 
Neumann finally got to Green in the seventh, scoring all three of its runs, but Kodey Kiel (Owatonna, Minn.) came on in relief and threw three innings of one-hit relief, striking out four, to lock up the Cardinals' fifth win of the season.
 
Piechowski and Matthews each finished with three hits to pace the Cardinals' 11-hit offensive attack, while Piechowski scored a pair of runs and Tepp led the way with three RBIs.
 
The Cardinals (5-2 overall) are back in action on Saturday, squaring off against RPI in a nine-inning nonconference game slated for a 2:45 p.m. (EST) opening pitch.