Match Summary vs. Carleton / GameDay Online / Photo Gallery

WINONA, Minn. — With two matches remaining in their Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference schedule remaining — and their MIAC tournament lives hanging in the balance — Saint Mary's University volleyball coach Mike Lester was nervous about his team's match against Carleton Wednesday night.

After all, a loss to the Knights and — no matter what SMU did in its conference finale against Gustavus on Saturday — the Cardinals would most likely be the odd team out come tournament time.

Fortunately for Lester, unlike their coach, the Cardinals were calm, cool and collected against the Knights.

And dominating.

SMU — getting 12 kills from both Courtney Runge (St. James, Minn.) and Amy Kujak (River Falls, Wis.) — kept those post-season tournament hopes alive, rolling to a lopsided
3-0 (25-18, 25-19, 25-12) victory at the SMU Gym.

“I did not expect a match like that,” admitted Lester, whose team moved to 5-5 in the MIAC and are tied with Augsburg — 3-2 winners over St. Catherine Wednesday — for the sixth and final playoff spot heading into Saturday's final conference match. “I figured this was going to be another match like Augsburg (a 3-2 loss Friday night) — long, hard-fought nailbiter.”

Lester was the only one biting his nails Wednesday, as SMU made it look easy, racing out to early leads in all three sets, including rattling off a string of eight straight points in the third set that gave the Cardinals a commanding 21-9 advantage en route to their fifth sweep of the season.

“This was a big match — this was the one we had to win,” said Lester. “If we would have lost tonight, and then beat Gustavus, we might still not have been able to get in (due to tie-breaking procedures). We needed to win this one and the ladies came out and got the job done.”

Runge and Mate were the only players with 10 or more kills, while Brittany Cherwinka (Faribault, Minn.) finished with 32 assists and Theresa Perrini (Fairway, Kan.) tallied 18 digs.

The Cardinals now close out their season on Saturday, taking on 18th-ranked Gustavus in a 3 p.m. match, before entertaining UW-Superior in a nonconference match immediately following.

Here's how the MIAC tournament scenerio shapes up heading into Saturday's finale match: SMU and Augsburg at tied for sixth at 5-5, one game ahead of Carleton (4-6). With a victory over Gustavus and an Augsburg loss vs. St. Thomas, the Cardinals will be among the conference-tournament field. If both Augsburg and SMU win, the Auggies will get the nod due to their 3-2 win vs. SMU last Friday. If both Augsburg and SMU lose, and Carleton beats St. Catherine, the three teams will be tied for sixth at 5-6 and SMU advances, via the conference's second tie-breaking criteria. Since all three teams would be 1-1 in head-to-head competition — Augsburg beat SMU, SMU beat Carleton and Carleton beat Augsburg — the next tiebreaker is "game record percentage during matches between all tied teams." Saint Mary's is at 5-3 (3-0 vs. Carleton, 2-3 vs. Augsburg); Carleton is at 3-3 (3-0 vs. Augsburg, 0-3 vs. SMU) and Augsburg at 3-5 (3-2 vs. SMU, 0-3 vs. Carleton).

Lester is hoping it won't get to that.

"If we go out and take care of business, we won't have to worry about all the tie-breaking criteria," said Lester. "We just need to go out and play the way we are capable of playing and, hopefully, that will be enough."