Box Score

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3		6

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WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University women's hockey team enjoyed one of its best offensive nights of the season Friday, as the Cardinals pelted St. Catherine goalie Mel Gerten with 39 shots, including three that found the back of the net — marking just the fourth time this season SMU has scored three of more goals in a game.

St. Catherine, meanwhile, managed just 19 shots on Cardinal goalie Brittany Lemke (St. Charles, Ill.).

Unfortunately, the Wildcats' quality was far more effective than the Cardinals' quantity, as St. Catherine made it look easy as 1-2-3 — scoring once in the first period, twice in the second and three times in the third en route to a 6-3 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win over SMU at the SMU Ice Arena.

"This one hurts," said SMU coach Terry Mannor, whose team took a giant step forward in the race for one of the MIAC's five playoff sports with a win and a tie vs. Hamline last weekend, but took a giant step backward with Friday's loss. "Give their goalie a lot of credit, she kept (St. Catherine) in the game. We just did not play very well defensively.

"It was nice to see us our offense come around a bit,' added Mannor, who had watched his squad score two, two, one, two and one goal in their last five games  — going 1-2-2 in that span five-game span. "But you aren't going to win many games when you give up six goals."

The two teams traded first-period goals, as Megan Boehmer gave St. Catherine an early 1-0 lead, while Jenn Shire (Anaheim Hills, Calif.) tied it with three minutes remaining.

Jamie Henneman (Countryside, Ill.) collected her first collegiate goal less than two minutes into the second period to give SMU a brief, 2-1 advantage, but St. Catherine roared back with a pair of goals five minutes apart to give the Wildcats a 3-2 cushion heading into the game's final 20 minutes.

And over that final 20-minute span, the Wildcats would find the back of the net three more times, while SMU could only muster the first collegiate goal by Ashley Mileykovsky (Northbrook, Ill.) midway through the period.

"This is a disappointing loss, no way around that," said Mannor, whose team had lost to the Wildcats just once in their previous 18 meetings (15-1-2). "But now we've got to bounce back and get ready to play again (Saturday) afternoon. We can't hang our heads and feel sorry for ourselves — we've got to put this game behind us and move forward."