WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University of Minnesota men's basketball team ran into a hot hand Saturday afternoon at the Saint Mary's Gym.
 
Make that hands.
 
Macalester heated up the Cardinals' home court, knocking down back-to-back 3-pointers to open the game, and the Scots never relinquished the lead in handing Saint Mary's a 74-54 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference setback in the teams' season finale.
 
The Scots would score the game's first eight points and would build their lead to as big as 11 on two separate occasions in the opening half, before settling for a 35-27 advantage at the break.
 
And, unfortunately for the Cardinals, the second half opened in much the same way as the first, as Macalester again came out and once again knocked down back-to-back treys to push its lead to 14, 41-27.
 
Macalester pushed its second-half lead to as many as 19, but the Cardinals would not throw in the towel, using a 15-4 run to whittle the Scots' lead down to eight, 56-48, with six minutes remaining.
 
That, however, would be as close as Saint Mary's would get, as Macalester closed by scoring 18 of the game's final 24 points to seal the win.
 
Connor Kaiser (Rockland, Wis.) scored a team-best 10 points, while Ronnie Ortiz (Dayton, Ohio) and Mark Schumacher (Perham, Minn.) each chipped in nine points. Swiggum also hauled in a team-high seven rebounds for the Cardinals, who shot 41 percent from the field (20-for-49).
 
Dylan Kilgour tossed in a game-high 19 points, while Bert Yaffe and Kyle Bernhard added 16 and 11 respectively for Macalester, which finished with eight 3-pointers—five in the first half and three more in the second—and shot 49 percent from the field (27-for-55) en route to the season-ending victory.