Game Summary
WINONA, Minn. — Despite the fact that they scored a season-high 97 points and won by 22 points in their first meeting, Saint Mary's University women's basketball coach Dan Messmann was a little worried headed into Wednesday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference rematch against Augsburg.
After all, the Auggies, who dropped their first 13 games of the season, got win No. 1 against St. Olaf last Saturday — the same St. Olaf team that beat the Cardinals 58-51 last Wednesday.
Messmann made have had a bad case of the butterflies, but his Cardinals sure didn't, as Jamie Rattunde (Rollingstone, Minn.) scored a game-high 21 points and Angie Arrington (Spring Grove, Minn.) and Ashley Luehmann (Lewiston, Minn.) also scored in double figures as SMU pulled away in the second half en route to a 74-62 win at the SMU Gym.
"I was a little nervous — (Augsburg) had been playing much better of late, and that win over St. Olaf was a big one for them," said Messmann, whose team won its second straight and improved to 8-4 in the MIAC and 12-4 overall. "At this time of the year, our goal is consistency — we need to play consistent basketball from game to game."
Which is something the Cardinals — despite their impressive record — have struggled to do.
"We're getting some good, consistent minutes, but there aren't enough of them," explained Messmann, who got 21 points from Rattunde, 17 from Luehmann and 13 from Arrington in the win. "We need to do a better job of playing at a high level all the time."
And Wednesday's performance was another in that line of consistently inconsistent efforts.
SMU shot 41 percent from the field in the first half — including a 5-for-16 effort from the 3-point line — but could only put together a five-point, 36-31 lead at the half. In the second half, SMU was again right around the 42 percent line from the field, but the Cardinals managed just one 3-pointer in nine attempts.
Augsburg hung with SMU for the first six minutes of the second half, trailing by just four, 43-39 at the 14:10 mark. Over those final 14 minutes, however, SMU would build its lead as big as 20 on three separate occasions before settling for the 12-point victory.
"We're heading into a huge stretch in our schedule — and we need to be hitting on all cylinders," said Messmann, whose team travels to Concordia on Sunday for a key MIAC matchup. "For about 15 minutes tonight, we were great, for the other 25, we were just pretty good. Hopefully we can take those great 15 minutes and play like that the entire game (against Concordia)."
