WINONA, Minn. — If things continue the way they have in the last two games, Saint Mary's University of Minnesota women's basketball coach Brent Pollari is going to need a little hair coloring to hide all the gray his Cardinals are giving him.
 
For the second game in a row, Saint Mary's found itself in a nail-biting, fight-to-the-finish.
 
And—fortunately for Pollari—for the second game in a row, when the final horn sounded, it was the Cardinals who came out on top.
 
The Cardinals—coming off a heart-stopping, 65-59 come-from-behind win over Carleton on Saturday—held off a St. Catherine late-game charge, en route to a 62-60 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory at the Saint Mary's Gym.
 
Leading by five heading into the fourth quarter, the Cardinals surrendered the first nine points of the fourth quarter and went from a 46-41 advantage to a 50-46 deficit in the span of two minutes.
 
The Cardinals answered with six unanswered points of their own to regain the lead, 52-50, with 6:02 remaining in regulation.
 
The teams took turns playing with the lead over the next five minutes, with Saint Mary's finally grabbing a five-point, 61-56 lead with one minute left on the clock. SCU would score four of the next five points to make it a two-point game, 62-60.
 
A Saint Mary's turnover trying to milk the final seconds off the clock gave St. Catherine a chance to tie the game with a field goal—or win the game with a 3-pointer—but the Cardinals' defense forced LaShay Holt into an off-balance jumper at the buzzer that failed to connect as the horn sounded.
 
Micaela Meredith (Bloomington, Minn.) led the Cardinals' offensive charge, going 9-for-17 from the field and a perfect 4-for-4 from the free throw line en route to her team-high 23 points. Bridget Pethke (New London, Wis.) chipped in 11 points and added nine rebounds and five assists for Saint Mary's, which went 23-for-67 from the field—but were just 1 of 10 from the 3-point line.
 
Holt, who eclipsed the 1,000-career-point mark with her fifth point of the first half, scored a game-high 26 points for the Wildcats, while Kennedy Jennings also finished in double figures with 11 points.
 
It was a tale of two quarters in the first half, as St. Catherine could do not wrong in the opening 10 minutes, scoring 10 of the first 13 points and holding off a late 8-3 Saint Mary's run for a 14-11 lead after the opening quarter.
 
The second half belonged to the Cardinals, who scored eight straight points—ignited by a Micaela Meredith (Bloomington, Minn.) 3-pointer—to grab a 24-16 advantage. St. Catherine would cut the deficit to four on three separate occasions, but the Cardinals would let the Wildcats get no closers in taking a six-point, 30-24 lead into the locker room at the break. Saint Mary's would built its lead to as many as 10 five times in the third quarter, before settling for the five-point lead—and setting up the nerve-wracking fourth quarter.
 
The Cardinals (11-2 MIAC, 17-3 overall)—who remained in a first-place tie with St. Thomas with their second straight win—are back in action on Saturday, heading to St. Joseph, Minn., for a 3 p.m. conference showdown with Saint Benedict.