WINONA, Minn. — It was a career night — times two — for the Saint Mary's University men's basketball team.
And those two career-best performances — along with a 15-point, 12-rebound double-double by
Raheem Anthony (Chicago, Ill.) — added up to a streak-snapping victory for the Cardinals Wednesday evening.
Jabari Sawyer (Chicago, Ill.) scored a team- and career-high 18 points — including a perfect 10-for-10 from the free throw line — and
Breyton Buysman (Inver Grove Heights, Minn.) chipped in a career-best 16 points in leading Saint Mary's to a 69-58 Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory over Hamline at the Saint Mary's Gym.
The Cardinals — who snapped a five-game losing streak with the win and avenged a three-point loss to the Pipers earlier this season — could not have scripted a better first half, at least a better end to the first half.
Trailing by as many as four twice in the first 11 minutes, Saint Mary's turned up the offensive heat — with Anthony fanning the flames. The junior scored seven straight Cardinal points to ignite a 9-0 run that turned a 17-13 deficit into a four-point 22-17 advantage with 7:33 to play.
And the Cardinals were just getting warmed up, closing the half by scoring 11 of the final 13 points — including Anthony's fifth field goal of the half with four seconds to play to give SMU a 33-21 cushion at the break.
The Pipers would put the clamps on Anthony in the second half, limiting the high-scoring junior to just four points and five rebounds over the game's final 20 minutes.
Enter the dynamic duo of Sawyer and Buysman.
Sawyer scored all 18 of his points in the second half — and knocked down eight of his 10 free throws in the game's final 1:27 — while Buysman tallied 10 of his 16 points after the halftime intermission.
Saint Mary's maintained a double-digit lead for the first six minutes of the second half, and led by 13, 47-34, with just over 14 minutes to play, only to have Hamline make things interesting, rattling off nine unanswered points to whittle the Saint Mary's lead to four, 47-43, with 10:23 to play.
Eight straight points by Sawyer — back-to-back 3-pointers and a pair of free throws — pushed the Cardinal lead back to 12, 55-43, and the Pipers never recovered.
As a team, Saint Mary's shot 48.1 percent from the field (26-for-54) with 10 3-pointers and were 10 of 13 from the free throw line.
The Cardinals (4-8 MIAC, 6-10 overall) are back in action — and back on their home court — on Saturday, when they welcome MIAC-newcomer St. Scholastica to the Saint Mary's Gym for a 3 p.m. conference matchup.
