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GameDay Preview
ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University women's basketball team took the quick-strike approach against St. Catherine Wednesday evening.
The Cardinals scored the game's first 10 points and used a 9-0 run to open the second half and cruised to a 77-47 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference win at Butler Center.
The Cardinals wasted little time taking control — or so they thought — scoring the game's first 10-points and leading 12-2 just four minutes into the opening half.
St. Catherine, however, had other ideas, using an 18-4 run — capped by back-to-back 3-pointers from Shauna Horsch and Liz Ellens — to grab a four-point, 18-14 advantage with 11 minutes remaining.
Over those final 11 minutes, SMU regained the momentum — and the lead — recording its second 10-0 run of the half for a 24-18 lead and maintaining that six-point advantage, 36-30, heading into halftime.
The first three minutes of the second half were a virtual mirror image of the first, as the Cardinals tossed in the first nine points to push their six-point lead to 15, 45-30.
And SMU was just getting warmed up.
The Cardinals would push their lead to 24, 63-39, with 6:30 remaining to cap a 25-9 half-opening burst — and that was just the beginning, as SMU's lead ballooned to as many as 32 en route to its fifth straight win.
Shelby Auseth (Wanamingo, Minn.) scored a game-high 19 points, hitting 9 of 11 field goals, while
Bridget Pethke (New London, Wis.) chipped in 13 points, four assists and five steals.
As a team, the Cardinals shot 51 percent from the field (32-for-63) — including draining 8 of 23 3-point attempts. St. Catherine, meanwhile, went 18-for-55 from the field (33 percent) and made just four 3-pointers — all in the first half.
The Cardinals (5-1 MIAC, 8-1 overall) — who have now started the season 8-1 for the first time since 1985-86, when SMU opened 19-0 en route to a 24-3 overall record and an NCAA tournament appearance — return to action on Saturday, when they host league-leading and ninth-ranked St. Thomas in a 1 p.m. conference showdown at the SMU Gym.
