WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University baseball team entered Sunday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference game against Augsburg having recorded 25 extra-base hits through the season's first 18 games — all doubles.
 
Saint Mary's added three extra-base hits to that marker against the Auggies Sunday — including two that weren't doubles.
 
Jack Arndt (Coon Rapids, Minn.) and Tyler O'Brien (Belle Plaine, Minn.) launched Saint Mary's first two home runs of the season — as well as the first of their collegiate careers — to lead the Cardinals to a 5-4 victory at Max Molock Field.
 
Saint Mary's wasted no time getting their bats heated up, scoring twice in their first at-bat — one on a Justin Weinberg (Eagan, Minn.) groundout and the other on a Will Matthews (Geneva, Ill.) RBI double — to take a 2-0 lead.
 
Augsburg would get one back in the top of the second, before taking its first lead of the game, 4-2, thanks to a three-run home run just inside the left-field foul pole by Steven Salz in the third.
 
Saint Mary's cut the deficit to one on Arndt's lead-off home run in the fourth, then knotted the game at 4-4 in the fifth when Weinberg, who reached second on a pair of Auggie throwing errors, third and scored on a wild pitch.
 
And with one swing of the bat, the Cardinals would plate what proved to be the game-winning run in the bottom of the sixth, as O'Brien launched a rocket off the scoreboard in left to open the inning — and give Saint Mary's the lead for good, 5-4.
 
Justin Haugo (Springfield, Minn.) picked up the pitching win, throwing four innings of shutout ball, while allowing just three hits. The junior left-hander worked out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the eighth, inducing a 6-4-3 double play to end the threat, before working a 1-2-3 ninth. Jake Mercado (Belle Plaine, Minn.) worked the first five innings, surrendering four runs — just two earned — on six hits.
 
Offensively, Weinberg and Joey Costello (Victoria, Minn.) each had two hits, while Arndt, O'Brien, Matthews, and Taylor Anderson (Waukesha, Wis.) accounted for SMU's other four hits.
 
The Cardinals (6-4 MIAC, 12-7 overall) – who have now won five straight — are back in action on Wednesday, heading to Saint John's Becker Park in Collegeville, Minn., for a conference doubleheader against the Johnnies.