Game Summary
WINONA, Minn. — If there was any chance Saint Mary's University women's basketball team was thinking past Monday's conference game against Bethel — and ahead to Wednesday's showdown with perennial MIAC power St. Thomas — they certainly didn't show it.
The Cardinals scored 27 of the final 35 points of the first half and never looked back, as SMU rolled to a 72-61 victory over the Royals — extending their winning streak to four straight, and putting them in perfect position heading into Wednesday's match-up with the Tommies.
"There was no way anyone on this team was going to look past (Bethel)," said SMU coach Dan Messmann, whose team moved to 3-0 in the MIAC with Monday's win. "In this conference, you can't afford to look past anyone — so we were focused on coming out and playing our best basketball. Our approach was, we'll deal with the St. Thomas game after we deal with the Bethel game."
Now that they've disposed of the Royals, the Cardinals can officially turn their focus to the Tommies — and UST's 38-game winning streak vs. SMU.
"(The St. Thomas game) will be the first real conference test for us," said Messmann, whose team lost to the Tommies three times last year, including 74-59 in the opening round of the MIAC post-season tournament. "As a team, we're hitting on all cylinders right now, so I think we've set ourselves up well for that game.
"Now it's just a matter of this team believing they can beat (St. Thomas). We played the close last year, even had a chance to win, but I don't think the players really believed they could do it."
For the first six minutes, however, it really did look like the Cardinals had the Tommies on their minds, as Bethel jumped out to an early 12-11 lead.
From there, however, it was all SMU, as the Cardinals went on a 14-2 run to take a 27-14 advantage, then closed out the half with a 13-4 run to take a commanding 40-20 lead into the locker room at halftime.
And the Cardinals picked up right where they left off in the second half, using an 18-5 burst to open the half, then built ht the lead to over 30 points, before Messmann sat his starters down.
"We played 25 minutes of pretty awesome basketball," said Messmann, who got a game-high 17 points from Ashley Luehmann (Lewiston, Minn.) in just 19 minutes of work, while Jamie Rattunde (Rollingstone, Minn.) — who was named MIAC Co-Player of the Week earlier in the day — scored 15 in 22 minutes and Angie Arrington (Spring Grove, Minn,.) added 11 in 19. "It was nice to be able to get some of our bench people some playing time — I wouldn't say it was their prettiest performance, but at this point, experience is the key for them."
Anna Cunningham scored a team-high 12 points for Bethel, which falls to 1-2 in the MIAC and 2-3 overall.
