ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University of Minnesota women's basketball team headed into Saturday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Playoff championship game against St. Thomas hoping the third time would be the charm.
 
Instead, the Tommies—a thorn in the Cardinals' side in the teams' two regular-season meetings—made it a clean sweep.
 
The Tommies—getting a game-high 23 points from Katie Stone—used a commanding third quarter to take a 31-point advantage, and held off a 31-point Saint Mary's fourth-quarter outburst in handing the Cardinals a 77-65 setback at Schoenecker Arena.
 
The Cardinals—who dropped their two regular-season games against top-seeded and eighth-ranked St. Thomas,  falling 76-67 and 89-65—were meeting the high-powered Tommies in the MIAC Playoff championship game for the second time in the last three years.
 
And, unfortunately for the Cardinals, the end result was eerily similar, as St. Thomas—a 13-point, 71-58 victor two years ago—notched the 12-point victory this time around.
 
"I'm proud of the guts and heart of this team," said Saint Mary's coach Brent Pollari, who guided the Cardinals to a second-place regular-season finish, as well as the second-place showing in the MIAC Playoffs in his first year at the helm. "There was no quit in them—from start to finish, they gave it everything they had.
 
"And as a coach, that's all you can ask for."
 
The Cardinals got out to a quick start, scoring the game's first four points, and led 8-7, before St. Thomas ended the quarter on a 12-6 run to own a 19-14 advantage.
 
St. Thomas turned up the heat—way up—in the game's second and third quarters, getting three 3-pointers from Stone as part of a 15-4 UST burst that pushed St. Thomas' lead to 34-20 with three minutes remaining until halftime. The Tommies and Cardinals each netted six points over those final three minutes, as UST took a 14-point, 40-26 lead into the locker room at the break.
 
The 15-minute intermission did nothing to cool off the hot-shooting Tommies—who shot 51 percent from the field in the game's opening 20 minutes—as St Thomas scored the first 14 points of the third quarter to build a 26-point, 54-26 cushion four minutes in.
 
And as quickly as they started the half, the Tommies were equally as deadly ending the stanza, scoring the final eight points to make it a 65-34 UST run heading into the game's final 10 minutes.
 
The Cardinals finally found their shooting touch in fourth quarter, nearly scoring as many points in that 10-minute period (31) as they did in the first three combined (34)—but it was too little, too late, as the Tommies held on for the victory.
 
Sam Jones (White Bear Lake, Minn.) scored a team-high 15 points for the Cardinals—who made 22 of 67 field goals (32 percent), but were just 2 of 15 from behind the 3-point line. Micaela Meredith (Bloomington, Minn.) also finished in double figures for Saint Mary's, scoring 12 points, while Brandi Blattner (Eyota, Minn.) netted eight points and added a game-high 16 rebounds.
 
Stone was one of four Tommies to score in double figures, as UST—which went 29 of 61 from the field (47 percent) and drained 7 of 22 3-pointers—also got 14 points from Kaitlin Langer, 13 from Lauren Fischer, and 10 from Paige Gernes. The Tommies Half down 26-40;
 
With the win, UST (24-3 overall) earned the conference's invitation to the NCAA's big dance, while the Cardinals (21-6 overall) will have to wait until Monday's selection show (1:30 p.m. CST) to see if they are awarded one of the national tournament's at-large berths.