Game Summary

ST. JOSEPH, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University women's basketball team is in the midst of a daunting schedule — four games in seven days, including three against teams that have already qualified for the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference post-season tournament.

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, Stage 1 of the four-stage mini-marathon didn't go exactly as SMU would have liked — mainly because Monday's opponent, St. Benedict, didn't stick to the script.

The Cardinals went toe-to-toe with the league-leading Blazers for the game's first 24 minutes, but then St. Benedict threw the Cardinals a curve, switching its defense from man-to-man to a zone.

And for the remaining 16 seconds, the Cardinals played like they were in a zone — the Twilight Zone — as CSB broke open a one-point game with 49 second-half points en route to the 82-59 Minneesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win.

"The game wa a lot closer than the final score indicated," said SMU coach Dan Messmann, whose team had locked up a place alongside Carleton, St. Benedict, Gustavus (Wednesday's opponent), and Concordia (Sunday's opponent) in the MIAC post-season tournament with last Saturday's win against Macalester. "We hung right with them until they switched to the zone. Once they went to zone, they just got some momentum and ran with it.

"We got some good looks, we just weren't hitting shots, again."

Four Cardinal players hit their shots, as Beth Walch (Altura, Minn.) netted a career-high 21 points, while Jamie Rattunde (Rollingstone, Minn.) chipped in 15, and Angie Arrington (Spring Grove, Minn.) and Ashley Luehmann (Lewiston, Minn.) tallied 12 and 10 points, respectively.

Problem was, other than those four, a free-throw by Megan Moran (Burlington, Wis.) was the only other point SMU scored.

"You aren't going to win many games with only four players scoring," said Messmann. "It wasn't like we didn't have open looks, because we did. We just weren't knocking them down."

The Cardinals led for much of the first half, before a late St. Benedict run gave the Blazers a one-point, 33-32 halftime advantage. The two teams traded baskets for the first four minutes of the second half, before CSB went zone — and the Cardinals never recovered.

"We need to be able to adjust better," said Messmann. "Their zone was tough on us, but not that tough."