Portland, Ore. – When the day began, the Saints were staring elimination down. Heading into the night, Saint Martin's found themselves advancing to their first appearance in the GNAC Championships. After falling in round one on Wednesday to Montana State Billings, the Saints responded with a pitching duel, and an offensive explosion to cement their names in the SMU history books.
Austin Feist provided all the offense for the Saints in their 3-2 victory over Northwest Nazarene with a 3-run home run in the fourth inning.
Mickey Walker who earned the win, came in during the third throwing a scoreless 1.2 with a strikeout.
The Nighthawks, who grabbed an early run in the second inning, grabbed one more back in the sixth off of a groundout to shortstop
Ryne Oshiro.
Things got interesting in the ninth as NNU loaded the bases; but reluctantly for the Saints,
Ryan Dorney, who earned the save got the final Nighthawk batter to line out to freshman centerfielder
Cody Chavis.
The celebration carried into the late night as the Saints found themselves in a rematch of their final regular-season series opponent, Western Oregon. The Wolves found themselves coming off of a 10-0 defeat by Billings in the earlier game.
WOU jumped out to an early lead in the fourth, but that lead wouldn't last long. In the top half of the fifth, the Saints responded with a
Cody Chavis RBI double following a leadoff double by
Bryant Nakagawa.
The Wolves and Saints exchanged runs again in the sixth and seventh. The Saints tied the ballgame at two on a
Elijiah Santiago fielder's choice that scored Nakagawa on an error in the same play.
A 2-2 ballgame soon become an 8-2 game in a matter of minutes.
The eighth inning held all the answers for the Saints offense as they bombarded the Wolves pitching staff for six runs in the inning. A
Colton Peha double began the fun; bringing home
Aaron Renaud and
Isaac Hegamin and advancing Feist to third. Feist scored the next at-bat on a sac-fly to center field by
Micah McNicoll. Nakagawa struck again with an RBI single, bringing Peha in from second.
Ryne Oshiro stepped up and extended the lead to 8-2 with a single to shortstop that resulted in Nakagawa and Chavis scoring. The Saints grabbed one more in the ninth on a Feist groundout with a throwing error that brought home Renaud.
SMU advances to their first ever GNAC Championship game and faces Montana State Billings. In order to win the series, the Saints will have to knock off the one seed twice on Friday with games beginning at noon. Live stats and video will be available at smusaints.com.
