CHARLESTON, S.C. – Saint Mary's Baseball again struck early offensively and got 5.1 innings from Jackson Hulett in a 9-5 win over Charleston Southern in a seven-inning game on Monday morning.
 
The Gaels wasted no time attacking the Bucs as Chris Santiago doubled to left with runners at second and third to score Christopher Campos and Nick Mistone. They struck again in the top of the second when Nathan Chong drove in Seth Nager for a 3-0 Gaels lead.
 
SMC tacked on a couple more runs when Coleman Schmidt scored on a wild pitch in the third and Campos scored on a wild one in the fourth. But the big blow came later in the fourth again off the bat of Santiago when he blasted a home run to straight-away center to score McDonald and Chong to make it 8-0 Gaels.
 
However, the Buccaneers would fight back in the bottom of the fourth with a solo home run, a two-RBI single, and a sac fly to cut it back to an 8-4 game.
 
The Gaels got another run with a Schmidt sac fly to plate Chong in the sixth to make it a 9-4 game. Things got a little hairy in the bottom of the inning, after Hulett struck out the leadoff man, Owen Cuffe came in to pitch for the second day in a row and walked three batters along with throwing a wild pitch. Jack Snook was called upon for the second day in a row as well and struck out the first batter he faced, but did hit a batter to plate a run before recording the final out of the inning via strike out to end the base-loaded jam.
 
Snook started the seventh by hitting the leadoff man and allowed an infield single, but he got a fly out to first and a strike out with a tough-luck error at short in between as the Bucs put some high-bouncing choppers into play in the inning. Snook got to a 1-2 count on the last batter before the Gaels brought in Ryan Wiltse to close out the game and get the save.
 
TOP PERFORMERS
Jackson got the win to improve to 2-0 on the year and just had the bumpy fourth inning in a good outing overall. He allowed four earned runs on five hits with no walks and five Ks in his 5.1 innings.
 
Santiago went 2 for 4 with 5 RBI and two runs scored, Campos went 3 for 5 with two runs scored, Mistone walked three times, and Chong went 3 for for 5 with two runs scored and an RBI.  
 
UP NEXT
The Gaels will take on their first WCC for of the season when they travel to Los Angeles to take on LMU March 18-20 for a three-game set.