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WINONA, Minn. — When it came to summing up his team's performance in its Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference opener against Hamline Wednesday evening, Saint Mary's University volleyball coach Mike Lester wasn't about to pull any punches.

"They beat us — plain and simple," said Lester after watching his team get swept by the Pipers 3-0 (31-29, 30-28, 30-21) at the SMU Gym. "They just played better than we did."

And that, according to Lester, was a disappointment.

"We knew exactly what (Hamline) was going to do, and we couldn't stop them — we knew they were going to set the ball to their outsides, and we just didn't do anything to stop them from doing that," said Lester, whose team has now lost two straight for the first time this season. "Hamline is a good team. They are one of those three-through-six teams that are going to be fighting for a (MIAC) playoff spot,  just like we are — so we knew how important it was going to be to come and play well.

"We just didn't do that."

The two teams traded swings in the first two games, with Hamline escaping with a pair of hard-fought, two-point wins. In the third game, however, the Cardinals weren't able to answer the Pipers' early run, as Hamline scored the game's first five poiints and built their lead as big as 10, 19-9, en route to the match-clinching Game 3 win.

"There may have been a little bit of a letdown after two heartbreaking losses like those first two games — but there shouldn't have been," said Lester, who got 10 kills from both Pam Stanton (Mundelein, Ill.) and Racquel Reker (Mantorville, Minn.), as well as 35 assists from Rachel Monterastelli (Wonder Lake, Ill.). "Every match we play in this conference is going to be tight, and we have to be ready — mentally and physically — to meet that challenge.

"It's not exactly the way we were hoping to open the conference, but it's also just one match," said Lester, whose team returns to action Friday, playing host to cross-town rival Winona State in a 7 p.m. nonconference match. "We need to learn from this match and move forward."