CAROL STREAM, Ill. — After scoring a combined 17 runs in back-to-back losses to Aurora and Wheaton (Ill.) on Monday, the Saint Mary's University baseball team was limited to just three runs in its nine-inning nonconference game against Northwestern on Tuesday.
 
With Timmy Smith (South St. Paul, Minn.) on the mound, however, three runs was more than enough to get the Cardinals back on the winning track.
 
Smith tossed his first collegiate nine-inning complete game — limiting Northwestern to just one run on five hits, while striking out a career-high eight — as the senior right-hander led the Cardinals to a 3-1 nonconference victory at Lee Pfund Stadium.
 
Northwestern scratched across the game's first run in the bottom of the third, tagging Smith for a pair of hits — including an RBI single by Benji Bruce — to grab an early 1-0 lead.
 
The Cardinals doubled-up the Eagles' run production in the top half of the fourth in earning its first lead of the afternoon. Two walks and a hit batter loaded for the bases for SMU with one out, and Daniel Marxen (Maple Grove, Minn.) — who had two hits in both of the Cardinals' games on Monday — delivered a two-run single to right, and Saint Mary's was in front, 2-1.
 
Saint Mary's padded its lead to 3-1 with a solo run in the seventh, when Daniel Sherman (Richfield, Minn.) — making his first collegiate plate appearance — delivered a pinch-hit, double to left and eventually scored on a passed ball.
 
Saint Mary's six hits off two Northwestern hurlers came from six different players — Marxen, Sherman, Tanner Bauman, Cameron Weber (Holmen, Wis.), Mason Coyle (Madison, Wis.), and Patrick Schork (Janesville, Wis.) — with Sherman's double the only extra-base hit.
 
The Cardinals (4-7 overall) are back in action — weather permitting — on Thursday, when they kick off the home portion of their 2023 schedule with a nonconference doubleheader against UW-Superior. First pitch at Max Molock Field is slated for 1 p.m.
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