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WINONA, Minn. — Through two games, one thing has become crystal clear to Saint Mary's University men's soccer coach Chris Dembiec — goals will be at a premium for his Cardinals.

The Cardinals made the most of their one goal, riding a Juvenel D'Haiti (Evanston, Ill.) second-half goal to a season-opening 1-0 victory over Presentation last Friday.

Monday afternoon, the Cardinals' offense never even got shifted out of neutral, as UM-Morris held the Cardinals to just four shots on goal en route to a 2-0 nonconference victory at Ochrymowycz Field.

"We knew coming into the season that, with the loss of Mike Schmitt (to graduation), we don't have that dynamic, go-to guy who can bail us out with his goal-scoring abilities," said Dembiec. "And that's been pretty evident in these first two games."

Without that go-to guy, the Cardinals' offensive focus has to be on quality, rather than quantity.

And SMU certainly had a few quality chances against the Cougars — only to come up empty each time.

"There were a couple of stints in this game where we put on so much pressure that we should have been able to come away with a goal, but we weren't able to capitalize on those opportunities," said Dembiec. "Defensively, we've been pretty solid — our back four have played outstanding. Our issue right now is that we're still making some mental mistakes that you can't afford to be making — especially against a team like Morris."

The Cougars opened the scoring at the 30-minute mark, as Antonio Coria was on the finishing ending of a tic-tac-toe passing combination with teammates Mattson Towley and Patrick O'Connor. Ricky Granquist gave UM-Morris some breathing room, launching a free kick that bounced over the head of SMU goalkeeper Jim Schultz (Kenosha, Wis.) and into the net wiht 15 minutes remaining in regulation.

"Morris is a good team, you've got to give them a lot of credit — they have some very talented players and they played a solid game," said Dembiec, whose team returns to action Saturday, playing host to Northland in a nonconference game. "It's disappointing to lose a game like this, but I thought we did some nice things out there.

"We have yet to play at the top of our game for a complete 90 minutes — and that's something we need to change in a hurry."