Game Summary
WINONA, Minn. — Saint Mary's University women's basketball coach Shawn Stimmel has had a busy last three days.
In fact, in a span of less than 52 hours, the Cardinals' first-year head coach has helped with two very special deliveries.
On Thursday, Stimmel had a role, albeit a rather minor one, in the delivery of his second child, seven-pound, nine-ounce Isabella Rose.
Saturday afternoon, Stimmel was back behind the bench and played a much more major role in the Cardinals' 73-59 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win over Augsburg — a victory that snapped SMU's season-high five-game losing streak.
"It's been a pretty hectic couple of days," admitted Stimmel. "This was a nice win for us — a win that we desperately needed. I thought everyone did a pretty nice job, especially in the second half.
"We didn't come out with quite the intensity I would have liked, but we really turned things up a notch in the second half and that was the difference."
Like Thursday's delivery of his first daughter, Stimmel's role was overshadowed a bit on Saturday, as junior Jessica Weisbrod (Rollingstone, Minn.) took center stage in guiding the Cardinals to their first win since a 54-46 triumph over Macalester on Dec. 4, 2006.
Weisbrod, who netted a career-high 20 points in SMU's loss to St. Catherine on Monday, and followed that up with her first double-double of the season — and third of her career — with a 12-point, 15-rebound effort in a loss to Carleton on Wednesday, made it back-to-back double-doubles, as the SMU junior netted a game-high 18 points and pulled down 12 boards.
"Jess has really stepped up her game of late — she has been a force on both ends of the floor this past week," said Stimmel. "It's performances like that that help to spark a team, and that's exactly what happened today — Jess took control of the game and helped carry us to the win."
The Cardinals struggled form the field in the opening half, shooting just 26 percent from the field in falling behind 34-27 at the break. But over the game's final 20 minutes, the Cardinals came to life.
SMU took its first lead of the second half at 15:04 on a jumper by Melissa Launhardt (Schaumburg, Ill.), then took the lead for good, 48-47 on a basket by Dusty Benham (Deer River, Minn.) with 12:21 remaining. The Cardinals would build leads as big as 16 over the final 12 minutes en route to their second conference win in nine tries.
"We needed this win," admitted Stimmel. "I thought we played pretty well against both St. Kate's and Carleton, but both times we came up short. Today, we were able to put together a really good half of basketball and that carried us through."
