PORTALES, N.M. – Eastern New Mexico baseball earned its third nationally ranked win of the season after a 9-5 result over No. 18 St. Mary's.

"We took advantage of some mistakes that they made," said head coach Riley Price after the game. "We executed some small ball to create some havoc."

Cole Curtis had a season-best five hits in the win with three singles and two doubles. Curtis improved his batting average from .306 to .336. It is the third time in a four-game stretch that a Greyhound has posted five hits in a game.

Two other Hounds had multi-hit games. Ryan Weaver had two singles and Logan Martin added a single and triple. It marks just the fourth time this season that Weaver had two or more hits. Martin now has 12 multi-hit contests.

St. Mary's got on the board early courtesy of a solo shot to deep left field by Dillon Lopez. He has a team-best eight homers. The Rattlers added two more runs in the second inning to increase their lead, 3-0.

The first run of the evening for ENMU came in the second inning. The inning started with Jake Willerup reaching first on an error. It was the first of four errors committed by StMU. Later in the frame, Willerup advanced to third base and Weaver reached safely via a two-out single. Logan Martin came up clutch with a two-out single to score Willerup and put the deficit at two runs.

The course of the game changed in the fourth inning. Demitirius DiMatteo held his own in the frame and helped limit the Rattlers offense. Eastern's bats came alive in the fourth. They scored all seven of their runs in the period with no outs. The inning included five Greyhound walks, three singles, a triple, and an error.

StMU was represented by three different pitchers in the inning. The first reliever for St. Mary's came in the game with a runner at second base. After four-straight walks from that point, ENMU took an 8-3 lead. Eastern New Mexico would not give up the advantage the rest of the way.

The Rattlers picked up a run in the fifth and ninth, while Eastern added insurance in the eighth. ENMU improves to 14-21 and StMU drops to 25-10.

Demitrius DiMatteo had an excellent outing going seven innings. He allowed four runs (three earned) on three hits, two walks, and two hit batters. Ten of his 21 outs came via a flyout. Alexander Sanderson closed out the win with a two-inning outing. He gave up one run on four hits. ENMU saw four different pitchers for StMU throw in the game. All four arms came into Thursday's game with an ERA better than 8.00.

St. Mary's four errors proved to be costly in the matchup. Two were credited to their shortstop, while a pitcher and second baseman had the other two errors. The Greyhounds stayed fairly clean defensively and only committed a single error.

Both teams meet back at Greyhound Baseball Field for a doubleheader on Friday, April 3.