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Game Summary vs.St. Olaf / GameDay Online / Photo Gallery

WINONA, Minn. — Eric Zimmerman had seen this before.

And that wasn't a good thing for the Saint Mary's University women's soccer team.

The Cardinals, who kicked off the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference portion of their schedule with a 3-0 loss to St. Catherine on Thursday, found themselves with a bad case of deja vu on Saturday, as St. Olaf handed SMU its second straight 3-0 conference setback at Ochrymowycz Field.

"I don't know what the problem is — all of the sudden our offense has just disappeared," said Zimmerman, whose team had outscored its first three opponents 14-1 before going into a pre-winter hibernation. "We just did not get anything going offensively today. Nobody was willing to take any chances. We need someone — anyone — to step up and be assertive, to get our offense going."

St. Olaf's Lindsay howard proved to be a one-woman wrecking crew, as the freshman assisted on Deanne Schmidt's second goal of the season 29 minutes into the first half, then added her team-leading fifth and sixth goals of the season to accounted for the Oles' two second-half tallies.

SMU goalkeeper Mariana Sanchez (Puebla, Mexico) did her part, stopping seven of the Oles' 10 shots on goal, including a point-blank shot by Becca Neuger just before Howard tapped in the rebound for the second of her two goals.

"Mariana played great — it was like a repeat performance of Thursday (against St. Catherine)," said Zimmerman. "She made a couple of huge saves (vs. St. Catherine) and we just stood there and ball-watched and they put home the rebound. It was the same thing today — Mariana made the first save, we've got to be better at clearing the rebounds away."

The Cardinals, who fall to 0-2-0 in the MIAC and 3-2-0 overall, return to aciton Saturday, traveling to Hamline for a 1 p.m. conference game.