Staff photo by Jeremy Behnke Minnesota Valley Lutheran third baseman Caleb Carlovsky tags out Mankato Loyola’s Caleb Fogal during Thursday’s game at Mueller Park.

NEW ULM — Mankato Loyola’s Logan Carlson held Minnesota Valley Lutheran to two hits through five innings as the Crusaders jumped to a 5-0 lead and went on to top the Chargers 5-3 Tuesday afternoon in a nonconference baseball game at Mueller Park.

Carlson went 6 1/3 innings to earn the win.

Cole Thompson took the loss for MVL, now 13-4.

Caleb Carlovsky led the Chargers with two hits as MVL was outhit by Loyola 10-4.

But while the Chargers were out-hit, MVL head coach Jim Buboltz said that his team was able to put the bat on the ball.

“We had a lot of ‘at em’ balls today,” he said. “We had a lot of line drives — we put the bat on the ball and if some of those balls drop (in) the score could be the other way around.”

Loyola scored a single run in the fourth inning on a passed ball. MVL mounted a potential game-tying rally in the bottom of the inning but a base running mistake at third base cost the Chargers a potential run.

The Crusaders added another run in the fifth inning on a Mason Stoffel RBI single.

Loyola increased its lead to 5-0 in the top of the sixth inning before the Chargers got some of those hit balls to drop aided by two Loyola infield errors.

Zach Riederer led off the sixth with a single and Leyton Brau followed that up with a base hit. Both runners moved up on an infield groundout. Carlovsky got the Chargers on the board with a single. An error added another run before a bases-loaded walk to Kaiden Hammerschmidt forced in the third run of the inning to cut the lead to 5-3.

MVL threatened in the bottom of the seventh when Brau slapped a one-out double but reliever Mark Gartner got the next two outs to end the game.

“The guys did not give up and they gave us a chance to win here at the end,” Buboltz said. “We want to play playoff type of atmosphere games now and get ready for the next game.”