WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University baseball team entered Wednesday afternoon's post-season showdown against Concordia having compiled an impressive, 25-13 overall record during a grueling 38-game schedule — which included a three-game, regular-season sweep of the Cobbers.
 
Yet, when Saint Mary's took the field for their Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Playoff opener, none of that mattered — the slate was wiped clean.
 
It was a new start, to a new season — and the Cardinals were on a mission
 
And the mission was simple: Win or go home.
 
Mission accomplished.
 
Saint Mary's scored five runs in the sixth inning and rode the stellar pitching of Luke Gilbertson (Windom, Minn.) and Jonathon Cieminski (Fountain City, Wis.) to a 6-1 victory over Concordia — earning the Cardinals a spot opposite second-seeded Gustavus at 7 p.m. on Thursday for the first day of the double-elimination portion of the conference tournament at Becker Park in Collegeville, Minn.
 
"This was a great team win," said Saint Mary's coach Nick Winecke. "We got tremendous pitching from both Luke and Jonathon, and we stayed patient at the plate — there was no panic. We hit some balls hard early that we weren't rewarded for, but we just stayed with our approach and got some clutch hits when we really needed them."
 
After managing just two hits through the first four innings — a two-out single in the second and a one-out infield single in the third — Concordia put together its first real threat against Gilbertson in the fifth.
 
Justin Kloster delivered his second hit of the afternoon to lead off the inning and was sacrificed to second. After a strikeout and a hit batsman, Matt Gruber recorded an infield single, but Kloster tried to score from second, only to be thrown out at the plate to keep the game scoreless.
 
The Cobbers maintained that offensive momentum in their next at-bat, stringing together three straight singles to plate the game's first run. Thomas Horan and Andy Gravdahl opened the Cobber sixth with back-to-back singles to put runners on first and third, and McGuire followed with an RBI single to center to score Horan. A sacrifice bunt moved Gravdahl to third and McGuire to second — and chased Gilbertson.
 
Kloster, the first batter Cieminski faced coming out of the bullpen, was thrown out at the plate on a comebacker to the mound for the second out, and, after walking Dawson Leer to load the bases, the Cardinal left-hander wiggled out of the jam with an inning-ending strikeout.
 
And a one-run deficit seemed to be just the offensive wake-up call the Cardinals needed.
 
Concordia starter Mason Penske had allowed just a Taylor Anderson (Waukesha, Wis.) fourth-inning single through the first five innings, and quickly recorded the first two outs of the Saint Mary's sixth. By the time the third out was made, however, Penske had been pulled and the Cardinals had racked up five runs to take a 5-1 advantage.
 
Taylor Anderson (Waukesha, Wis.) jump-stared the sixth-inning rally with a two-out walk and moved to second on a Justin Weinberg (Eagan, Minn.) single to left. Will Matthews (Eagan, Minn.) followed with a double to deep right — scoring both Anderson and Weinberg — and Andy Tepp (Stevens Point, Wis.), Cameron Weber (Holmen, Wis.), and Joey Costello (Victoria, Minn.) added RBI singles to give Saint Mary's its third, fourth, and fifth runs of the inning.
 
Despite the Cardinals' five-run sixth, it was the Cobbers' half of the inning that Winecke felt was the turning point in the game.
 
"The top of the sixth was the difference between us winning and losing," said Winecke. "To get out of that inning giving up just one run — that was key. We were able to minimize an inning that could have easily been a crooked number, and to me, that was the difference."
 
After being silenced in the seventh, the Cardinals' bats were once again heard from in the eighth, as Saint Mary's loaded the bases on a walk to Matthews, a Tepp single and a Cobber fielding error — and got a Costello sacrifice fly to plate their sixth and final run of the game.
 
And with Cieminski in prime form, a five-run lead was more than enough.
 
The senior made his final appearance at Max Molock Field a memorable one, going 3.2 innings in relief of Gilbertson, allowing just one hit, while walking three and striking out a career-high seven. Gilbertson scattered seven hits in 5.1 innings, surrendering just the lone, sixth-inning run. He did not walk a batter and struck out two.
 
Tepp led the Cardinals' offensive attack, going 2-for-4 with a pair of runs scored and an RBI. SMU's other five hits came from five different players — Anderson, Weinberg, Matthews, Weber, and Costello. Costello, who extended his hitting streak to 12 straight games, and Matthews each finished with two RBIs.