DAVENPORT, Fla. – The last time the Saint Mary's University baseball team took the field against Northwestern (Minn.), the Eagles dealt the Cardinals their first loss in the NCAA Division III Regional Tournament, beating SMU 3-1.
Saturday afternoon, the two teams net once again.
With a much more favorable result — at least in the opener.
Saint Mary's extracted a bit of revenge on the Eagles, grabbing a 6-4 victory in the opening game of their nonconference doubleheader. Things didn't go quite as well in Game 2, however, as Northwestern turned the tables on the Cardinals, earning the split with a 5-1 victory.
The Cardinals jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning — getting a first collegiate home run from
Trevon VanEgtern (La Crosse, Wis.) and an RBI single by
Brandon Merfeld (La Crosse, Wis.) — only to give those runs back, plus one, in the top of the third.
Saint Mary's regained the lead for good with back-to-back two-run innings in the fourth and fifth, before surrendering a solo run to the Eagles in the top of the seventh to round out the scoring.
Cameron Weber (Holmen, Wis.) delivered SMU's second home run of the game — an inside-the-park shot — to score both of SMU's fifth-inning runs, while Merfeld added an RBI single and
Tyler O'Brien (Belle Plaine, Minn.) added a sacrifice fly to account for the Cardinals' two sixth-inning tallies.
Luke Gilbertson (Windom, Minn.) tossed his first complete game of the season, allowing four runs on seven hits, while striking out two and not walking a batter. Offensively, Merfeld was the only Cardinal with more than one hit, going 2-for-3 with a pair of RBIs.
The Cardinals got a second straight pitching gem in the nightcap, as
Jordan Zabel matched Gilbertson's effort with the first complete game of his collegiate career. The sophomore surrendered five runs on six hits and struck out three.
Giving Zabel any run support was hard to come by for the Cardinals, who managed just a solo run — on a
Jack Arndt RBI single — while Northwestern scored two in the first, two in the fifth, and one more than in the sixth to earn the split.
Arndt matched his career-high with three hits, going 3-for-3, while
Ben Coons (Kimberly, Wis.) and VanEgtern had SMU's other two hits.
The Cardinals, who closed out their eight-game spring trip at 4-4, are back in action next weekend, squaring off against Luther in three nonconference games that will be played at Mount Mercy College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. SMU and Luther will play a doubleheader beginning at 1 p.m. on Saturday, before ending the trip with a 1 p.m. single game the following afternoon.
