Game Summary

WINONA, Minn. — As quickly as it appeared, it disappeared for the Saint Mary's University women's soccer team.

It was the Cardinals' offense — missing for the majority of the season, but had made an all too brief appearance last Wednesday in a conference match against Gustavus. Problem was, with that rare appearance of an offensive attack, the defense decided to take a breather, and SMU came out on the short end of a 6-2 MIAC decision.

On Saturday, the Cardinals' defense was back to its old self — and, unfortunately, so was the offense, as SMU managed just one shot on goal en route to a 3-0 loss to league-leading St. Thomas.

"St. Thomas is a very, very good team," said SMU coach Dan Blank, whose team has now been shut out in five of its six losses and has managed just four goals in nine games. "To have to play Gustavus and St. Thomas — two of the toughest teams in the conference — back-to-back is not an easy task.

"I thought we did a nice job, especially in the first half," continued Blank, whose team surrendered the only goal of the first half at the 26:16 mark as UST's Natalie Walz took a feed from Tessie Thompson and beat SMU goalkeeper Colleen O'Hearn (Champlin, Minn.). "We kind of wore down a bit in the second half, and their speed and athleticism made it tough for us to keep up."

St. Thomas (4-0-0 MIAC, 8-1-0 overall) padded its lead to 2-0 on a goal by Maggie Curran at the 66 minute mark, before Sarah Bird closed out the scoring with the Tommies' third goal with less than three minutes remaining.

"I thought offensively we did a much better job against Gustavus than we did today," Blank said. "But you have to give St. Thomas a lot of credit for that — their defenders are very good and they did a nice job of breaking up our attacks and then countering and creating offense of their own."

O'Hearn finished with 15 saves, while backup Dianna Kyllo (Kasson, Minn.), who played the final 10 minutes in goal for the Cardinals, recorded four saves. Jess Christopherson needed just one save — off a shot by SMU's Alicia Knutson (Cottage Grove, Minn.) — to post the shutout for the Tommies.

"I've said all season that we have to take each game as a learning experience and continue to build and improve," said Blank, whose team returns to action on Tuesday, when they play host to St. Catherine in a 4 p.m. game. "We did a lot of good things this week, now we need to keep working hard to improve on them and get ready (for St. Catherine)."