Box Score  | GameDay Preview

ARDEN HILLS, Minn. — After the game's first 20 minutes Saturday, the Saint Mary's University women's basketball team had Bethel right where they wanted them — the Royals headed into the intermission with a four-point lead.

The Cardinals had so much fun putting together a 24-7, game-ending run to rally from a 15-point second half deficit in a 55-53 win over Macalester last Wednesday, they decided to do it again against the Royals.

Sort of.

SMU trialed by as many as five early in the second half, then took control, turning a one-point, 50-49 lead with 4:28 to play into a 65-56 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory at Robertson Center.

With the win, SMU improves to 16-4 in conference play, and remains just one game behind league-leader Concordia — which beat Hamline on Saturday — with two games remaining in the regular season. The Cardinals are tied for second in the MIAC standings with both Saint Benedict and St. Thomas, as the trio chases Concordia for the regular-season conference crown — while also battling for one of the league's two first-round byes in the upcoming six-team MIAC Tournament.

Saint Benedict, which lost to St. Thomas 65-46 on Saturday to create the three-way second-place logjam, comes to the SMU Gym on Wednesday. The Cardinals close out the regular-season with a home contest against Augsburg on Saturday.

Bethel scored the game's first four points and led by as many as seven on two separate occasions, before settling for a 29-25 halftime advantage.

SMU grabbed its first lead of the game, 35-33 on a basket by Courtney Athnos (La Crosse, Wis.), but a 9-4 BU run put the Royals back in front, 42-39, with 9:51 left in the second half.

Unfazed by the three-point deficit, the Cardinals put the pedal to the metal, scoring 19 of the next 26 points, using that 19-7 run to take a commanding 58-49 advantage en route to their second straight victory.

Jamie Stefely (Lisle, Ill.) scored a game-high 17 points to lead the way for SMU (16-4 MIAC, 19-4 overall), while Jessica Thone (Woodbury, Minn.) and Bridget Pethke (Larsen, Minn.) added 15 and 10 points, respectively.

As a team, the Cardinals shot 53 percent from the field (23-for-43) with a pair of 3-pointers, while going 17-fof-24 from the free throw line. Bethel, meanwhile, hit on just 34 percent of its field goal attempts (17-for-50) — and made just 1 of 13 shots from behind the 3-point line.