By DONNY NADEAU
Saint Mary's Sports Information Director
 
CAROL STREAM, Ill. — For the Saint Mary's University of Minnesota baseball team, Sunday's game against North Central started in much the same way the previous three did — with the Cardinals scoring in their first at-bat.
 
Fortunately for coach Nick Winecke and the Cardinals, the game didn't end the same way.
 
After failing to hold early leads in dropping games to Concordia-Moorhead and Concordia-Chicago on Friday, and against Wheaton on Saturday, the Cardinals said, "enough is enough."
 
This time around, Saint Mary's once again scored in the first inning — and never looked back, scoring the game's first five runs and rolling to a 7-4 nonconference win over North Central (Ill.) at Lee Pfund Stadium.
 
"I thought we played well — but then, to be honest, I thought we played well all weekend," said Saint Mary's coach Nick Winecke. "We got a great (pitching) start from Jonathan (Cieminski), we had some guys step up and come through with some big hits — that's baseball, the game rewards you when you need to be rewarded."
 
Saint Mary's grabbed a 1-0 lead in their first at-bat on a two-out, RBI single by Will Matthews (Geneva, Ill.), scoring Matt Piechowski (Hutchinson, Minn.), who had drawn a one-out walk and stole second.
 
The Cardinals pushed that advantage to 5-0 in the fourth inning, scoring four runs on four hits — including a run-scoring single by Piechowski and a two-run double off the bat of Liam Belleveau (Middleton, Wis.).
 
North Central answered with three runs in its half of the fourth, but that was as close as they would get, as Saint Mary's padded its lead to 7-3 with single runs in the seventh and eighth — the first on a seventh-inning sacrifice fly by Andy Tepp (Stevens Point, Wis.) and the second on an RBI single by Justin Weinberg (Eagan, Minn.).
 
North Central scratched across a solo run in its half of the eight, but Saint Mary's Kody Kiel (Owatonna, Minn.) would work a perfect bottom of the ninth to earn his second save of the season.
 
Weinberg finished 2-for-4 with a pair of RBIs — giving the junior at least two hits in all four of the Cardinals' games this weekend — while Piechowski, Belleveau, Matthews, Dirk Drohner (Plover, Wis.), Brandon Hafemann (Milwaukee, Wis.), and Zach Drake (Westby, Wis.) delivered Saint Mary's other six hits.
 
Jonathan Cieminski (Fountain City, Wis.) picked up his first pitching win of the season, allowing three runs — one earned — on nine hits, while walking three and striking out five in five innings of work.
 
"We knew going into this weekend that we were going to play some high-quality teams," said Winecke. "And when you play against good teams, a lot of times it shows what you do well and it also exposes you.
 
"This weekend gave us a great opportunity to learn about our team," Winecke added. "We could have come back 3-1, instead of 1-3, but it's really not about the record — it's what we learned that will help make us successful."
 
The Cardinals (7-7 overall) are back in action on Wednesday, as they travel to Wade Stadium in Duluth, Minn., for a pair of nonconference games against St. Scholastica. Game 1 first pitch is slated for 1 p.m.