Game Summary
WINONA, Minn. — Heading into Wednesday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference showdown with Gustavus, the Saint Mary's University women's basketball team boasted a 12-6 record in the conference.
Problem was, all six losses came against teams that were ahead of the Cardinals in the conference standings — two each to league-leaders Carleton and St. Benedict, one to Gustavus and one to Concordia.
Wednesday evening, the Cardinals finally got over the hump.
Ashley Luehmann (Lewiston, Minn.) led four SMU players in double figures with 23 points and the Cardinals survived a pair of late Gustavus 3-pointers en route to a 76-74 victory over the Gusties.
"That was a big, big win," said SMU coach Dan Messmann, whose team trailed by as many as seven early in the first half, before battling back to take a 36-33 halftime lead. "That was probably the best game we've played, start to finish. We never got down when things did go our way, and we kept our composure down the stretch."
Jamie Rattunde (Rollingstone, Minn.) scored five straight points to give SMU a 32-27 lead late in the first half, and the Cardinals never trailed again, building the lead to as big as nine, 60-51 on a 3-pointer by Angie Arrington (Spring Grove, Minn.) with 12 minutes remaining in regulation.
That nine-point cushion didn't last long, however, as Gustavus — which entered the game riding a five-game winning streak — used a 7-1 run to pull within three, 61-58 with 10 minutes left. SMU pushed the lead back to six on two separate occasions, the second on a layup by Rattunde that gave the Cardinals a 74-68 lead with 50 seconds on the clock.
Sara Boldt cut the lead in half with a 3-pointer that banked in from a near-impossible angle, but SMU responded with a basket from Arrington to make it 76-71 with 30 seconds left. Gustavus came up empty on two straight possession, each time missing a 3-pointer, before Lacy Skoog banked in a three from the top of the key with .6 remaining for the final margin.
"Everyone was pretty pumped tonight," said Messmann, noting that Senior Night certainly gave the Cardinals an additional boost. "We've been so close (against the conference's top teams)— we knew we could beat any of them, we just weren't able to do it. Tonight, it was like the players drew a line in the sand and said, 'Enough is enough.' "
Rattunde and Arrington chipped in 18 points for SMU (13-6 MIAC, 14-8 overall), while Beth Walch (Altura, Minn.) — one of the Cardinals' two seniors — added 13. Angie Peterson netted a game-high 25 points in the losing effort for GAC (15-4 MIAC, 17-5).
