Game Summary

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — With no hope of a berth in the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference postseason tournament, the Saint Mary's University men's soccer team decided to take a different approach to their final three conference games.

Rain on someone else's post-season hopes.

Enter Augsburg.

The Auggies headed into Saturday's conference game against the Cardinals tied for fifth place in the MIAC standings, just one point out of the fourth and final post-season playoff spot.

It was the perfect opportunity for SMU to be the spoiler.

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, the Auggies turned the tables, spoiling SMU's spoiler plans with a 3-1 victory.

"Everyone's pretty down right now, but the reality is, we played a very good game against a quality opponent," said SMU coach Chris Dembiec, whose squad dropped its third straight. "We talked a lot this week about how we were going to approach our final four games. With three conference games in our last four, our goal was to go out and play the role of the spoiler.

"We had a chance to do that (against Augsburg), we just couldn't quite get the job done."

The Auggies jumped out on top early, and took a 1-0 advantage into the halftime intermission. Augsburg pushed that lead to 2-0, before SMU finally got on the board on a picture-perfect, full-volley shot by James Kuhnle (Burlington, Wis.). Augsburg, however, got a goal late in the second half to put the game out of reach.

"I thought we played much better tonight than we did Wednesday," said Dembiec, whose team gave up a season-high four goals in falling to St. Olaf 4-0 last Wednesday. "We're still struggling to play a complete game — we let (Augsburg) get out to a 2-0 lead before we start clicking on all cylinders. It's been out Achilles' heel all season, and it was again tonight.

"On the positive side, everyone played with a lot of enthusiasm, they worked hard and they battled from start to finish," continued Dembiec. "They should feel good about their effort "