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MOORHEAD, Minn. — When the Saint Mary’s University baseball team went into the bottom of the seventh inning of their opener against Concordia with a two-run lead Saturday afternoon, coach Nick Winecke must have felt a twinge of déjà vu.
After all, Winecke had been in this situation — against this team — before.
Two years ago, as a player, Winecke and the Cardinals rallied from a pair of two-run, seventh-inning deficits to beat the Cobbers by identical 6-5 scores.
Last year, as an assistant coach, Winecke could only watch helplessly, as the Cobbers turned the tables on SMU, scoring four times in their final at-bat to beat the Cardinals 7-6.
Now, as a head coach, Winecke had to live through yet another nailbiting seventh inning against the Cobbers.
Staked to a 5-3 lead — thanks to a five-hit, five-run fifth inning — Winecke could only sit back and watch, as Concordia’s Jake Krause drew a lead-off walk, Scott Schumacher collected an infield single, and, after a pop-out to second, Kyle Johnson delivered a three-run home run to carry the Cobbers to a 6-5 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory.
“That first game was a tough one to swallow,” said Winecke, whose team never recovered from that seventh-inning heartbreak, giving up six runs in the first inning in falling 13-2 in Game 2. “We played so well all the way through, we just couldn’t seal the deal in the seventh inning.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Winecke added. “It’s always tough to lose, but when you lose like that (on a three-run walk-off home run), it makes it that much tougher.”
The Cobbers raced out to a 2-0 lead with single runs in the second and fourth innings, before SMU erupted for five runs in the fifth.
Kyle Ryan (St. Paul, Minn.),
John Swenson (Eagan, Minn.) and
Tyler Kruse (Minneapolis, Minn.) all delivered RBI singles, while SMU also scored on a Cobber error and a wild pitch to turn that 2-0 deficit into a 5-2 advantage.
Concordia cut the gap to 5-3 with another solo run in the bottom of the fifth, before Johnson’s seventh-inning heroics completed the Cobber comeback.
Things started poorly and just got worse for the Cardinals in the nightcap, as SMU
Gary Seifert (Prescott, Wis.) failed to get out of the first inning, giving up a one-out single and hitting the next two batters to load the bases. Back-to-back walks, a single and a two-run double gave the Cobbers a commanding 6-0 advantage.
And they were just getting started.
Concordia would scored in each of the first four innings, padding their lead to 8-0 with a pair of runs in the second, then adding three in the third and two in the fourth to race out to a 13-0 cushion.
SMU finally got on the board with single runs in the sixth and seventh, but it was far too little, far too late.
“Give Concordia credit, they swung the bats well and got the hits when they needed them,” said Winecke, whose team is back in action Monday, traveling across town to take on Winona State in a nine-inning nonconference contest, before closing out its season with an MIAC doubleheader against St. Thomas at home on Wednesday. “It certainly wasn’t the outcome we were hoping for — but we’ve got to regroup and get ready to play again.”