05/11/06

The win puts the Saints (36-4) into the Championship bracket of the tourna­ment where they will have to win only one more game to capture their tenth consecutive tournament crown.

The Saints gave starting pitcher Mark Moriarty a 5-0 lead before he stepped on the mound, sending 10 batters to the plate in a five-run top half of the first inning that chased LumberJacks starter Joey Norton (6-5) who took the loss for Northland (21-19-1).

St. Scholastica scored one run in both the second and third innings to take a
7-0 lead before completely blowing the game open in the fifth and sixth with three runs in each inning.

Eleven Saints registered at least one hit in the attack on four ’Jacks pitchers with nine players collecting at least one RBI in the game.

Second baseman Brandon Swartz led the offensive outpouring with four hits but oddly, only one other Saint — Kyle Wjotysiak — recorded a multiple hit game for St. Scholastica.

Swartz had 3 RBI for the Saints, centerfielder Chad Weiss scored four times, Mike Lewis and Wjotysiak crossed the plate three times, and third baseman Luke Olin added to his record-breaking single-season mark for triples with yet another, raising his new NCAA Division-III mark to 15 in one season.

Moriarty (8-2) picked up the win for the Saints pitching 5 innings of scoreless ball, striking out five, and working his way out of bases-loaded jams in the second and fourth innings. Jake Wendland pitched the final 4 innings scatter­ing three hits and a walk for only one run.

Shortstop Myles Buuck was the lone offensive star for the ’Jacks picking up three hits, including two doubles, and scoring the only run of the game for Northland.

Bethany Lutheran College and Northland must play in an elimination game – each now carrying one loss in the double-elimination tournament – for the right to face the Saints in the Championship bracket. The elimination game will be a rematch of the initial game of the tournament, an 8-1 ’Jacks victory.