ST. PAUL, Minn. — If Saint Mary's University of Minnesota baseball coach Nick Winecke were a screen writer, he's be hard-pressed to find a better opening act than the one that unfolded in the Cardinals' Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference opener Monday afternoon.
 
The Cardinals rode the right arm of junior Steph Scatassa (Westchester, Ill.)—and took advantage of three walks and a error to score three runs in the fifth innings—as Saint Mary's knocked off nationally ranked and defending conference champion St. Thomas 3-0 in the opening game of their MIAC twinbill.
 
It was a victory that snapped the Cardinals' four-game losing streak vs. the Tommies—not to mention a 10-game regular-season slide vs. UST—but also put an end to St. Thomas' 54-game home winning streak.
 
Unfortunately, Act 2 wasn't nearly as memorable for the Cardinals, as St. Thomas broke open a tight game with seven runs in the fourth inning and went on to a 13-4 victory and a split in the teams' conference-opening series.
 
Saint Mary's had at least one base runner in three of the first four innings in the opener—including a second-and-third, no-out threat in the second—but UST starter Dominic Reed was able to find a way to keep the Cardinals off the scoreboard.
 
Until the fifth.
 
The Cardinals finally broke through against the Tommie right-hander, parlaying three walks, a St. Thomas error and a Jon Schlemmer (De Pere, Wis.) single into three fifth-inning runs.
 
Drew Denning (St. Paul, Minn.) led off the fifth with a walk, moved to second on an error and scored on back-to-back walks to Willie Doll (Amherst, Wis.) and David Barry (Apple Valley, Minn.). Reed induced Ben Buerkle (Roseville, Minn.) to ground into a double play that plated the Cardinals' second run of the inning, and Schlemmer followed with an RBI single to score Doll and push the Saint Mary's lead to 3-0.
 
And three runs were more than enough for Scatassa, who worked out of a first-and-third, two-out jam in the bottom of the ninth to record his third collegiate complete game—a four-hit, six-strikeout gem.
 
Lursen led the Cardinals' offensive charge in the opener, going 3-for-3, while David Barry, Schlemmer and Jacob Frost (Moline, Ill.) accounted for Saint Mary's other three hits.
 
Lursen continued to swing a hot bat for the Cardinals in Game 2, as the junior delivered a two-run single in the top of the first inning to give Saint Mary's an early 2-0 advantage.
 
After going eight scoreless innings, the Tommies finally broke through, scoring once in the second—on a lead-off home run by Ryan Gerber.
 
And once the Tommies' offense got rolling, the were hard to stop.
 
UST used a two-run double by Dan Ziemann in the third to grab its first lead of the afternoon, 3-2, before adding seven runs in the fourth—highlighted by three-run home runs off the bats of Gerber and Zach Gottfredsen—to take a commanding 10-2 advantage.
 
The Cardinals scored single runs in the fifth and sixth—the first on back-to-back one-out doubles by Doll and David Barry, and the second on a two-out RBI single by Cale Pieczynski (Plover, Wis.)—but UST once again flexed its muscles in the bottom of the seventh, as the Tommies launched their third home run of the afternoon to put the game out of reach.
 
Doll, David Barry, and Jake Barry (Tinley Park, Ill.) all had two hits to pace Saint Mary's nine-hit Game 2 offensive attack, while Jacob Dawson (Oakdale, Minn.) suffered his first loss in five starts, allowing six earned run on three hits in 3 2/3 innings.
 
The Cardinals (1-1 MIAC, 13-4 overall) kick off the home portion of their 2015 schedule on Wednesday, entertaining Hamline in a 2:30 p.m. Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader at Max Molock Field.